


5 Parallel Universes Daisy Travelled To

by Persiflage



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: 5 Times, Also Had Too Much Fun With Alternate Relationships for Jemma Simmons, Alternate Timelines, Bank Robbery, Daisy Is The Only Marvel Superhero, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, First Kiss, First Time, Friends to Lovers, Future Fic, Hopping Parallel Dimensions, I Had Way Too Much Fun Creating Alternate Versions of Phil Coulson, Jewelry Heist, Kree Artefacts, Mentions of Daniel Whitehall, Mentions of Jasper Sitwell, Mentions of Jiaying, Mentions of John Garrett - Freeform, Mentions of Meldrew, Mentions of Simmons/Morse, Mentions of Sunil Bakshi, Mentions of Trip/Simmons, Older Man/Younger Woman, POV Skye | Daisy Johnson, Parallel Universes, Phil Coulson as a Chef, Phil Coulson as a Cop, Phil Coulson as a High School Teacher, Skye | Daisy Johnson's Superpowers, mentions of Cal Zabo - Freeform, mentions of Grant Ward - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-24
Updated: 2016-09-27
Packaged: 2018-08-17 00:16:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 23,651
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8123158
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Persiflage/pseuds/Persiflage
Summary: Daisy stumbles across a Kree artefact that sends her to different parallel versions of Earth, and in each one she meets an alternate!Phil.





	1. First Parallel

**Author's Note:**

> I had a lot of fun (possibly too much?!) writing the alternate versions of people, especially Phil Coulson, for Daisy to meet. (I wish I'd thought of Florist!Phil in time to include him!) I also had fun deciding how and when and where Alternate!Phil and Alternate!Daisy might have met, so I hope people have fun reading this.

**[First Parallel]**

"I think it's in the room at the end," Daisy tells Phil as they enter the hallway on the second floor of the abandoned HYDRA lab.

"Why don't you check down that end, and I'll check this end, and – "

"We'll meet in the middle," Daisy finishes, grinning at her field partner.

He grins back, nods, then turns to the nearest door, while Daisy strides down the hall, her every sense – including the extra one that Mack's dubbed her QSP (Quake Sensory Powers) – turned towards whatever's causing the strange buzz that she'd sensed as soon as they'd entered the building earlier. Whatever was affecting her sense of the building's vibrations was too faint for her to pinpoint accurately from the floor below, so they'd gone from room to room, checking each one, before they made their way up here. She'd immediately noticed the buzz was stronger on this floor.

"See anything yet?" Mack asks in her ear.

"Nope, just a whole bunch of doors in a very boring hall."

"But you're still getting the buzz against your QSP?" he asks.

She smiles. "Yeah, it seems to be stronger the further I walk down this hall so I'm pretty sure the whatever-it-is is behind door number 9."

"Just be careful," Phil says behind her, but speaking over their comms.

"Sure, Phil, because I'm a rookie and will just go barging in without bothering to assess the situation first," she says, a little sarcastically.

"You deserved that, Coulson," Mack tells him.

"Yeah, I know. I'm sorry Daisy, I'm just a worry-wart." 

She chuckles, then stops outside the door in question and reaches out with all her senses, both hands resting lightly on the wood.

"Yup, it's in here," she tells the others. She pulls a small object from one of the pouches on her utility belt, then unfolds tiny wings to reveal a miniaturised version of the Dwarves that Fitz had designed back when she'd first joined Phil Coulson's team. She cracks open the door she's standing beside, opening it the barest minimum necessary for Tiny to fly through, then tosses the device into the air before she shuts the door again.

"I've deployed Tiny," she tells Mack and Phil as she pulls out her cell phone and activates the app that controls Tiny. She and Mack had put a lot of work into the new baby Dwarf, and this is only its second field test. She follows Tiny's recon of the room, and notes that not only is there no one here, which she'd already figured, but that everything is covered in a thick film of dust.

"Okay, the room looks clear, so I'm going in. The object seems to be on the floor at the far side of the room, between two windows."

"Copy that." Phil's voice is thick with tension, and Mack's is hardly any more relaxed as their voices overlap in her ear. She guesses that Phil wants to join her straight away, but he's too professional to skip checking the other rooms first. 

So far every HYDRA building they've found has been completely empty – without Malick or anyone else in authority to deal with them, the lower ranks have kept away, meaning they're prime real estate that's being neglected. SHIELD teams are clearing them, keeping any useful equipment for their own labs, then Daisy creates the necessary paperwork that gives SHIELD authority to sell or lease them – mostly they're selling them off, which is giving SHIELD's funds a nice boost. Sure, SHIELD is legitimate and out of the shadows again, but they still don't have the financial or personnel resources that they had 5 years ago when Daisy first joined Phil's team aboard the Bus.

Tiny continues to fly around the room, recording everything that's in there, which isn't a lot, and allowing Mack to follow her progress from his position in the tac van that's parked a couple of blocks away.

"Is it that blue-grey thing?" he asks as Daisy approaches it.

"Yup." She stops a foot or so away, and stares hard at it, Tiny now hovering over her head. "Any thoughts?"

"It looks like alien tech," Mack observes, his tone wary.

"Yep, that was my initial impression, too."

"Be careful," Phil blurts out, as if he can't help himself. She doesn't blame him for his panicky reaction for even a second since she knows that between Loki's spear, the Chitauri helmet, the Kree portal, and the Kree crystals, he doesn't have a single favourable experience with alien tech.

"Don't worry, Phil," she says softly. "I'm not gonna touch – " A blue light explodes from the device even as she's reassuring him and Mack; there's no time to react before it envelops her, and her comms cut out.

When the light – the same shade of blue as the crystals inside the Kree Diviner, she notices – dissipates, she's more than a little confused to find herself in the same room, but it's no longer dusty, and there's considerably more equipment in here than there was a moment ago. She senses someone behind her and spins around in time to see Phil raising a gun and pointing it at her. Then she realises he must have rushed down the hall when her comms cut out, and he's expecting danger – perhaps Mack had told him about the blue light that had enveloped her.

"Coulson, it's okay," she says, taking a step forward towards him. "I'm okay. It just – "

"Stay right where you are, young woman," Phil says, and she's startled by how hard and cold his voice sounds. He's never – not even in the earliest days, not even when she screwed things up because of Miles – sounded so hard and cold with her before.

And then she notices his clothes: gone are the tight black jeans and the soft black polo shirt he'd been wearing all day. Instead he's wearing a dark grey 3 piece suit with a dark red tie. She swallows, wondering what the hell that device, which she suspects is Kree in origin, has done – has it thrown her back in time, she wonders.

"Put your hands up," Coulson orders, and Daisy obeys because his voice is cold and harsh, and his usually warm blue eyes are angry. Sure, she could use her powers to deflect any bullets he might fire at her – hell, she could probably knock him down before he got the first shot off, but she has the feeling that using her powers would aggravate this situation, and if she has travelled back in time to when he hasn't yet met her, she could complicate things.

He comes towards her, eyes trained on her the whole time. "How did you get in here?" he demands. "This lab is strictly restricted to authorised personnel only. SHIELD personnel. You aren't – " He stops dead, cutting himself off to stare even harder at her. "You're that 084 – the one I took in 5 years ago. What are you doing here? You were locked up in the Sandbox."

Daisy can't help flinching at his words. _Coulson took me to the Sandbox?_ she thinks crossly, then it hits her – if he recognises her and thinks she's escaped from the Sandbox, then she can't have travelled back in time. She frowns. _A parallel universe? Huh._

"Sorry, Agent Coulson, but I'm not who you think I am."

He scoffs. "You're Cal Zabo's daughter," he says, "Skye Zabo. And you're an 084 with the potential to become a Gifted human – we went over this."

She shakes her head. His mention of her father and the name Cal had adopted, Zabo, convinces her more than ever that she's on a parallel Earth, rather than back in time. "My name is Daisy Johnson," she tells him, "And I'm a SHIELD agent, and an Inhuman, and –  
GET DOWN!"

She yells the last two words at him as two figures, one horribly familiar, step through the door from the hall outside, both of them training guns on Coulson. The latter, suspicious though he is of her, doesn't hesitate – he spins around and he's already firing even as he drops to the ground in a fighting crouch. Daisy doesn't think – it doesn't even occur to her that her powers won't work here – she just lifts a hand and vibrates the air, deflecting the bullets that have been fired at Coulson (and incidentally speeding up his own), before the vibrations slam into John Garrett and the black man at his side.

The two are thrown violently back through the door to slam into the floor of the hall several feet away. 

"Are you okay?" Daisy asks, already rushing to Coulson's side before Garrett and his friend have crashed to the floor.

"What did you do?" he asks, sounding ridiculously awed.

"Vibrated the air," she says, kneeling beside him and giving him a quick visual check.

He grabs her shoulders. "You saved my life," he says breathlessly, then he pulls her forward, overbalancing them both so that she grabs at his shoulders in a vain attempt to keep them both upright. Instead she finds herself lying on top of Phil, who is clearly very excited by her abilities. His mouth latches onto hers and then she's being kissed pretty forcefully. She kisses him back without even pausing to consider whether it's a good idea or not, then she moans when his hands slide down her back to land on her ass, squeezing rhythmically as he kisses her deep and hard.

She grinds against him quite shamelessly, enjoying the swelling of his stiffening cock beneath her. She's often speculated to herself that Coulson would be a good kisser, and she's pleased to discover she wasn't wrong.

She has no idea how far the two of them might have taken things but for a groan from the hallway, which brings them to their senses, and they scramble up to their feet, Daisy already turning around with her hand and arm outstretched, ready to use her powers again if necessary.

It appears, however, that the pair in the hall aren't fully recovered yet, and Coulson, who's now straightening himself out (although he's still hard, she can't help noticing since his suit pants do nothing to hide the bulge of his arousal), reaches into his pocket and pulls out a small, very discreet two-way radio, and orders May and Morse to come upstairs.

"I ought to go," Daisy says, before realising that she has no idea how to get back home, and also that she is feeling a little light-headed from using her powers.

"Are you okay?" Coulson asks anxiously.

"Not so much," she admits.

"Go back into the other room and sit down for a few minutes," he says firmly in the tone of a man used to giving orders and being obeyed. "I'll make sure our friends here get taken care of, then you can tell me what's going on and how I can help."

She nods. "Thanks."

He shakes his head. "No, thank you," he says earnestly. He puts his hand on her arm, then asks, "Do you need anything right now, besides a chance to sit down?"

"I've got some snacks with me," she tells him. "I always carry them on field ops. But I could use some water."

"I'll see what I can do," he promises. He slides his hand down to hers and squeezes her fingers, his expression much softer and warmer now, and she feels her body tightening, aware that she's still aroused from his spectacularly good kissing.

Daisy senses May and Morse approaching, so she squeezes his fingers back, then moves back into the room, sitting in the corner that's in the blindspot of anyone who just looks in from the doorway. 

She pulls out the Little Debbie snack cakes that Phil – her Phil (not that he's really her Phil, but it's easier to distinguish between the Coulson in her universe and the one in this by thinking of him as 'her Phil') gave her this morning. In another pouch on her utility belt are some candy bars and some high energy protein bars – the latter are baked for her by Jemma Simmons: she makes up a large batch on weekends so that Daisy has them to carry for the week ahead. Baking is one of the things Jemma seems to do a lot since they lost Fitz 3 months ago: the two of them hadn't continued to date, post-Hive, but he was her oldest friend, so she'd taken his death hard. Daisy is glad that Jemma has Bobbi in her life (the two of them had begun dating a month before Fitz died). Of course, Daisy's glad in general that Bobbi is back with SHIELD – she values the older agent's friendship and experience. (She always feels vaguely guilty that she doesn't miss Hunter as much as she once thought she would.)

She listens to Coulson talking to May and Morse out in the hall, and wonders if he will want to pick up where they left off. She thinks he probably won't – after all, the kissing was almost certainly the result of adrenaline, just a heat of the moment thing.

When Coulson comes back in, Daisy's eaten 3 cupcakes and 2 protein bars, and she accepts the bottle of water (with the SHIELD logo on it, of course) he brings her with gratitude.

"So what happens now?" she asks, getting to her feet, then cracking open the water.

"I need to debrief you."

"I thought you were going to do that before," she quips without really thinking – she's too used to the banter than she and her Phil share to consider whether she should be making those sort of jokes with this version of Coulson.

He sort of growls, which she finds thrilling, then crowds her up against the wall, his mouth hovering over hers. "Would you like that, Agent Johnson?" he asks in a low voice as he wraps an arm around her body.

"I really would," she says eagerly.

"There's a safehouse about 30 minutes away. I'll take you there." He kisses her and she kisses back eagerly, her hands sliding down onto his ass this time.

"We do need to officially debrief as well," he tells her when they come up for air. "I need to know what happened for you to wind up here."

"Okay."

He leads the way down to the ground floor, and out to the parking lot where she's delighted to see Lola is parked.

Forty minutes later, they're in the kitchen of the safehouse and Coulson is making her something more substantial to eat. He's shed his suit jacket and tie, and rolled up his shirt sleeves to reveal that this universe's Phil Coulson has arms just as impressively muscular as her Phil. Daisy's perched on the counter just out of range of his preparation area, watching in some fascination as he works. She thinks it's just as well she's never watched her Phil cooking because she's discovering it's a huge turn-on for her. As far as she can tell, being watched is a turn on for this Coulson – she can sense arousal simmering through his vibrations, and she wonders if his liking for being watched extends to sex; she's never really thought of herself as a voyeur, but she's got to admit that the thought of watching him masturbate has occurred to her now – he's very good with his hands, after all.

"Do you like this?" he asks, breaking into her increasingly graphic reverie to offer her a piece of the apple he's been cutting up to go in the salad he's making to accompany the omelette he's promised to make her.

She watches his face as she gently clamps her teeth onto the piece of apple, then pulls it from his fingers and sucks it into her mouth. She chews, then swallows, and sees him swallow hard before his hand drops to adjust his stiffening cock, and she moans, then reaches out to tug him closer, spreading her legs so that he's between her thighs. Her mouth latches onto his rather forcefully making their teeth knock together, but neither of them cares as they begin to kiss frantically.

Daisy's already taken off her field suit, leaving her in a tank and a pair of shorts, and she grabs Coulson's hands, guiding his right one to her bare breast beneath her tank (her nipples are already so stiff they're painful), while she presses his left hand against her crotch. He doesn't miss a beat as he kisses her while unfastening her shorts with his left hand, before snaking it inside to cup her mound. (She's not wearing any panties – too many layers beneath the field suit make her too hot and uncomfortable.)

She groans loudly as he rubs a finger against her clit, and when her legs fall further apart, he pushes first one, then a second finger inside her, grunting when he discovers how very wet she is already. She bites down on his bottom lip when he crooks his fingers inside her and finds her sweet spot, which he begins to massage.

She comes, a quick, shallow orgasm that leaves her desperate for more, and Coulson pushes his fingers even deeper as he continues to massage her breasts with his other hand. It doesn't take long for her to come again, and she calls his name as her muscles tighten around his fingers.

"Fuck, Daisy," he mutters as her thighs fall open again and he pulls his hand away, flexing his fingers.

"Yes," she says adamantly. "I need – "

She gasps as he pushes three fingers into her this time. He works her towards a third orgasm, and this one is more intense – and causes a light tremor to rattle everything in the room.

He pulls back to look at her, eyes wide and mouth agape, as he asks, "Was that – ?"

"My powers, yes," she says.

"Fuck," he says urgently, then he pulls his fingers free, making her whine. He gets her shorts off, then unfastens his pants and pulls out the thick dick she'd felt beneath her when she fallen on top of him earlier. His cock looks absolutely massive, and she licks her lips in anticipation as he guides it to her throbbing sex. He stops with the tip pressed against her and she growls, then wraps her legs around his waist, but he lifts his dick up, and gasps,

"Wait. Condom. There's – "

"Coulson, I'm clean and I'm covered – SHIELD policy," she says desperately, and it must be the same policy here too, because he nods, then pushes into her.

They both moan as he slides his dick deep into her, and she has a brief moment of wondering whether her Phil has such a big cock, too, then Coulson's stretching her. He grunts when he bottoms out, then leans in and kisses her quick and hard before he begins to fuck her.

She has her hands on the back of his neck, and she can't resist scraping her nails across his skin as he thrusts. He shudders, swears, then picks up his pace, and Daisy finds herself having another room-rattling orgasm. He smirks at her this time, clearly appreciating the effect he's having on her.

She decides to try something with him that she only ever tried once with Lincoln, and lowers her right hand between their bodies to vibrate the air over her clit. His eyes go wide and he begins swearing, managing only three more thrusts before he climaxes, even as Daisy comes yet again. (She can't help recalling that she didn't have this kind of success with Lincoln, who'd hated the idea of her using her powers during sex anyway.)

"Fuck," Coulson mutters in a heartfelt tone, and she can't help chuckling at how wrecked he sounds. 

"That was amazing," he tells her once he's properly caught his breath.

"That's only the second time I've tried that," she tells him. "You appreciated it a lot more than my ex did."

"I'd like to do that again," he tells her, and she nods eagerly, keen to have the opportunity.

"Why don't you grab a shower while I finish putting this meal together?"

"Yeah. Thanks."

She manages not to whimper when his dick (which is still half hard, she notices) slips from her, and she lets him lift her down off the counter, before she grabs her discarded shorts and heads upstairs to the bathroom.

Once in the shower, she finds herself thinking about her Phil – she'd be lying if she said she's never thought about him sexually. (He's not the only person in SHIELD that she's thought about that way, but Phil's always been her first choice – they just clicked from their first meeting.) Aside from considering him both handsome and sexy, she loves his kindness and compassion; the fact that he'll offer people second chances; the way that he's open-minded and willing to learn new things still (especially from her, she's noticed). Of course the fact that he's always believed in her and seen her potential is also a contributing factor in her attraction to him. But the biggest thing is how sensitive he is – she's known very few men who are so sensitive and who don't try to hide that behind macho bullshit.

She wonders, as she showers, just what he'd say if she dared to tell him that she'd had sex with an alternative version of him mere hours after meeting him. She's not sure she'd have the courage to tell him, though.

She finishes her shower, gets dressed, then heads back downstairs, and Coulson smiles as she walks in.

"You have excellent timing."

She smirks at him, then crosses the room to take a seat at the table as he sets down a plate full of thick slices of bread, together with two bowls of salad, on the table. He serves up the omelette, giving her the bigger portion, she notices.

When she tries the bread, it's got a sort of nutty flavour to which she instantly takes a liking. "This is good," she tells him as she begins to eat. "Thanks for feeding me."

"It's the least I could do to thank you for saving my life," he tells her. "I'm assuming from your reaction that you know Garrett and Sitwell in your universe too?"

"I knew Garrett briefly, before he died. I didn't know Sitwell, but my Phil did – they were both HYDRA."

He nods, then asks, "How did you get here?"

She talks him through it, then has to explain about being an Inhuman as he hasn't encountered them in this universe.

"I'll have to ask the Director if he's familiar with them," Coulson says thoughtfully.

"Who is the Director here?" she asks idly.

"Robert Gonzales," he tells her, and she tries not to appear too surprised by the news.

"Has he been Director long?"

"No, he took over after HYDRA killed the previous Director, Nick Fury." 

He says the name casually and she guesses that this version of Coulson doesn't have the same father figure feelings, or the same favoured son status as her Phil. She remembers how her universe's Nick Fury had to fake his own death in order to slip under HYDRA's radar, and how that had affected her Phil.

She's about to ask further questions, but has to stifle a yawn instead, and Coulson gives her a concerned look. "Perhaps you should get some rest?"

"Yeah, I think I might if you don't mind?"

He shakes his head. "I'm going to check in with May and Morse, find out how our latest guests are settling into their new quarters at the Fridge. And I need to start putting together a report for the Director – I won't mention you, though as I'm not sure Gonzales would want to know about a dimension-hopping Inhuman."

She chuckles. "And that way you don't need to worry about avoiding any mention of extra curricular activities," she teases.

He blushes, which she finds immensely amusing. "I don't know about your Phil Coulson, but I'm not generally in the habit of having sex with random strangers. I don't want you to think I make a habit of banging every beautiful woman I encounter."

She wonders if she's blushing – it's always both embarrassing and flattering when Coulson calls her beautiful. "No, he's not in that habit, either. But don't worry, I don't think any worse of you – after all, I had sex with you and we'd only just met, technically speaking, for me too."

He nods, gets to his feet, then offers her a hand up from her chair.

"You and my Phil are quite similar in a lot of respects," she tells him. "Apart from the whole fucking me thing."

He gives her a surprised look. "You mean you and he – ?" He blushes again. "No, of course not – you wouldn't have had sex with me if you and he were already in an intimate relationship, even if I am an alternate version of him."

"No I wouldn't have," she agrees. "But it's something I intend to discuss with him when I get back home."

He nods, and she leans in and gives him a quick kiss, then stifles another yawn with a mumble of apology.

"Go and sleep," he tells her, and she wonders if she's just projecting, or if the look he gives her could be described as fond.

Daisy wakes from a sound sleep some four hours later with the strange feeling – a compulsion, even – to return to the building where she'd arrived a few hours ago. She pulls on her field suit, boots, and gauntlets, then hurries downstairs.

"Daisy? Everything okay?" Coulson's sitting at the desk in the sitting room, papers spread out before him, and a laptop open in the corner.

"I have to get back to where we met," she tells him urgently.

To his credit, he doesn't ask any questions, he just pulls on his shoulder holster, checks the safety on his gun, then grabs Lola's keys and leads the way to the car.

"I'm sorry about this," she tells him as he drives them back across the city.

"It's not your fault," he says in a reassuring tone.

"But – "

"No, Daisy," he says firmly, a tone she's heard on occasion from her Phil when she's blamed herself for something he considers outside of her control.

"Do me a favour?" she asks as he's pulling into the parking lot.

"Anything I can," he says immediately.

"Go and see Skye Zabo at the Sandbox, please? Check how she's doing?"

"I will," he promises.

She nods. "Don't come up with me." She gives him a quick, hard kiss, then climbs out of Lola and hurries back inside. She's not sure how she knows she's running out of time, but she senses she is. She rushes into the room, and moments later there's a burst of blue light, and when she opens her eyes again, it's to find she's somewhere new.


	2. Second Parallel

**[Second Parallel]**

When Daisy opens her eyes to find she's not back in the HYDRA lab she left earlier – yesterday? (Does time move at the same rate between the parallels, she wonders.) – she has a moment of mild panic thinking about what Phil and Mack must be going through, but she forces it down, focusing in on her immediate surroundings instead.

This room has an abandoned air, more so than the lab she started out in – there's dust and rubbish everywhere, and overturned chairs beside the tables. There's also, she notices, a broken pane of glass in the window behind her. Deciding she's wasting her time simply standing here, she heads out of the room and downstairs, wondering why she's here and not back in her own universe. It's a big assumption, she knows, but she thinks she's in another parallel Earth – the vibrations around her feel slightly different in a way she could never explain to someone who doesn't have her powers.

When she reaches the street she finds a scene of chaos – blue and whites are stopped at odd angles down the block, a distant crowd of onlookers is being held back behind barricades, and there's a guy with a megaphone, who's clearly trying to negotiate with one or more people who are in the bank that's opposite the building Daisy just exited. 

She studies the scene carefully for a few minutes, taking in all the details, then she heads back into the building in which she arrived, and goes straight up to the roof. She doesn't have any equipment with her, and doesn't want to try to find some – the scene below had an air of urgency about it, as if the situation was in danger of spiralling out of control at any moment.

She takes a good look at the bank opposite, then she backs up as far as she can, and feeling grateful for the food and rest she'd had in the previous parallel universe, she sprints across the rooftop and leaps towards the roof of the building housing the bank. She's only tried this once before, and on that occasion she ended up with a broken arm, but she pushes backwards hard with her powers, vibrating the air against the building behind her to give her leap more power.

She rolls as she lands, tucking in her head and elbows, and although she bangs her knee hard, she can still walk once she gets to her feet. She quickly pulls off her gauntlets and the jacket of her field suit, ditches her utility belt, then puts it back on again – it's too useful to leave here: she'll need the snacks soon, she knows. She folds her field jacket around her gauntlets, then tucks the bundle out of sight before moving across the roof until she finds a door. It's locked, unsurprisingly, but Daisy places her palm flat over the lock, concentrates, and after a few second of vibrating the lock's components, it clicks open and she slips inside. She heads downstairs rapidly, searching for the bank manager's office – with any luck, he'll have an internal security monitor and she can find out what's going on. 

She finds the office, which helpfully has a nameplate on it, and walks in. She supposes the manager left the door wide open in his haste to get down to the lobby, where she can see two balaclava-wearing figures waving shotguns around. She does a quick head count and reckons there's about 20 customers and staff down there. That's fewer than it might have been, but she notices there's at least four kids and one heavily pregnant woman sitting on the lobby floor, and sitting next to the latter, with his arm around her shoulders, is Phil Coulson.

"Fuck," Daisy says crossly.

After a few minutes to assess the behaviour of the two armed robbers, she makes her way downstairs to the lobby. She waits until the 2 men are at the farthest end of the lobby together (which, she considers, is pretty foolish of them – at least one of them should have his attention on the hostages at all times), then she slips towards a young mother with a little girl who appears to be in shock, and quietly persuades them to move back into the hallway from which Daisy's just come. She gets them settled in an office at the back, handing over a candy bar, and ensuring that the mom knows they need to keep quiet, before she goes back into the hall.

Edging into the lobby again, Daisy gets an older woman, possibly a grandmother, plus the two boys in her care, out next. She can hardly believe the robbers haven't noticed what she's doing yet, but their attention seems to be divided between arguing with each other, and shouting demands at the negotiator outside. Daisy's fairly sure that once they noticed that a quarter of their hostages have gone, all hell will break loose, but so far, so good.

She offers the grandmother a candy bar for her charges, but Mrs Hawtree (she insists on giving her name to Daisy) says she's got some boxes of raisins in her purse, so Daisy leaves the two women and the children in the relative safety of the office before she sneaks back into the lobby again.

She catches Phil Coulson's eye and gestures for him to bring the pregnant woman to her; she wonders if the woman is his wife or daughter, and squashes a ridiculous pang of jealousy at the thought because this isn't her Phil.

Coulson shakes his head at Daisy's beckoning, his expression regretful, and she risks moving further into the group of people, some of whom have picked up on her presence, no doubt realising she wasn't among their number before. She has no idea how long this hostage situation has been going on (and kicks herself for not asking Mrs Hawtree), but she suspects it's at least a couple of hours, judging by the weary and wary attitudes of the hostages.

An older man, whom she recognises from the photos she saw in his office upstairs as the bank manager, frowns heavily at her and opens his mouth. She's not sure how loudly or quietly he's going to speak, so she glares at him, putting a finger to her lips, and hoping he'll keep quiet. He scowls at her, but subsides without speaking.

She closes in on Coulson, acutely aware that the argument at the door between the two robbers is almost certainly about to turn ugly, and speaking softly, says to Coulson and the woman he's with, "Let me get you out of here."

"I can't," the woman answers. "My ankles are too swollen. I can't walk."

"They took Ms Dupree's wheelchair away," Coulson tells Daisy in a low voice.

Daisy nods her understanding, wishing this situation was different (and wondering a little at Coulson's formality: _Perhaps Ms Dupree is neither a wife nor a daughter,_ she speculates).

As Daisy turns towards a man in his thirties with a prepubescent girl at his side she realises the row by the door has just escalated: the vibrations from the robbers have taken on a note of violence, something she's all too familiar with from all the time she spent on the run after that business with Hive.

She decides that she needs to move faster to protect the remaining hostages, and turns back to Coulson and Ms Dupree. 

"Things are about to go from bad to worse," she tells them quickly, then turns to the father and daughter. "You all need to keep your heads down. I'm going to do my best to keep you safe, but I need you to help me to help you."

"Who are you to be giving orders?" demands Mr Crawley, the bank manager. He doesn't make much effort to keep his voice down, and the robbers by the door both look around in surprise.

"Goddammit!" mutters Daisy under her breath. She springs to her feet and rushes forward, thrusting both hands out in front of her. With one hand she uses her powers to vibrate the guns that the robbers are carrying, the intention being to vibrate them to pieces, while she uses her other hand to vibrate air at the two men, which pushes them both backwards. Unfortunately, because Daisy's dividing her powers between two people and two actions, she doesn't hit the robbers as hard as she'd have liked, nor does she succeed in vibrating apart both the weapons.

The robber on the right stumbles as he's pushed backwards, but he still manages to get off a shot, and while Daisy responds fast, she doesn't have Elena's superspeed, and a slug slams into her shoulder. She doesn't quite bite back a cry of pain, but she neither falters nor falls, she simply focuses all of her attention and powers on knocking down the two robbers.

They go down in spectacular fashion, crashing backwards through the huge glass window beside the door. She hears cries of surprise and alarm from the people out on the street, but she ignores them, and clamping a hand over the gunshot wound in her arm, she turns to speak to the bank manager.

She takes one step toward him before her head starts to spin, and then she can feel herself falling.

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She comes to in an ambulance, to find an EMT working on her shoulder. She tries to sit up, despite the fact that the ambulance is moving, and is immediately pushed back down against the gurney.

"I don't know where you _think_ you're going," the EMT, a black woman about her age, with sharp eyes, says, "but keep still."

"But – " Daisy begins. She's worried about the consequences of someone taking too close a look at her – she knows both her blood and DNA are different since she went through Terrigenesis. Plus, she has no kind of health insurance or income in this universe, and she may only be here for a few hours anyway.

"It would be best if you let her work," says a familiar voice, and Daisy rolls her head sideways in surprise to see Coulson sitting up on the other gurney while a second EMT cleans a nasty cut above his right eyebrow.

_Really?_ thinks Daisy disbelievingly. _Why is it always there that he gets hit?_ There's no one to answer that question if she asks it aloud, of course. But she can't help wondering.

"We haven't been introduced," Coulson goes on, and she tries not to smile as he goes all Charm School. "Phil Coulson."

"Daisy Johnson," she says automatically, then wonders if she should've used an alias when he frowns, then winces, even as the EMT tells him to keep still – she's just about to apply sutures to his damaged face.

As the EMTs work, Phil stares at her, and she can see confusion and curiosity in his expression, and she has a sneaking suspicion that this universe's Daisy Johnson is someone he knows, or knows something about – but she can't ask what, not right now. She doesn't want to draw even more attention to herself.

They come to a stop just as Daisy's EMT fixes her arm in a sling.

"Do not try to use this arm before you're given permission," the woman says in a stern tone.

"Got it," Daisy says, resigned to being incapacitated for the time being.

They're wheeled into the hospital, and taken straight through for assessment, which surprises her. Phil chuckles softly when he notices her surprise.

"You're a hero," he tells her. "The two robbers you stopped today are believed to be behind a string of violent bank robberies across three states. They've left a number of bodies in their wake."

"Huh. What happened to you, anyway? Did your face have an argument with someone's fist?"

He chuckles again, and the sound warms Daisy in the same way that it does when her Phil laughs.

"More or less," he agrees, and when she raises an eyebrow at him, he elaborates. "Mr Crawley objected to the destruction of his window after you threw? Blew?" He gives her a quizzical look, then resumes his narrative. "The robbers through it. When I pointed out to him that he and his employers owed you for saving his and everyone else's lives, not to mention saving the bank from the loss of a quarter of a million dollars, he got rather testy."

"And punched you?"

"And punched me," Coulson agrees. 

"Did someone punch him back?" she asks.

He smirks. "Although I coach the local high school basketball team, I also do BJJ in my spare time."

She can't help looking him up and down in what she afterwards realises is a far too blatantly appreciative manner, and when she looks back at his face, his smirk's been dialled up to 11.

"Like what you see?" he asks, his tone cocky and flirty, and she feels a familiar thrill at his words and attitude.

"Very much," she says frankly. "Remind me to thank you later for defending my honour against Crawley."

His eyes go wide for a moment, then he gives her what she can only classify as a shit-eating grin. "Oh, I will remind you," he says smoothly.

_Fuck_ , she thinks, resolving to quit flirting with Phil Coulson in other universes.

A few hours later she and Coulson are both released, though Daisy's ordered to return the following day to have her dressing changed.

"You look in desperate need of rest," he observes as they make their way down the steps to the street.

"And food," she agrees, too tired and hungry to pretend otherwise.

"And there's something we need to talk about," he says. His tone is unthreatening, but Daisy feels herself tensing up anyway.

"Will you let me make you something to eat so we can talk in privacy? I've got a guest room you can crash in." He blushes a bit, then adds, "There's no strings attached to this offer."

"Thanks. I appreciate it," she tells him.

He looks relieved by her agreement, and she wonders what he wants to discuss – she'd put money (if she had any) on it being something relating to her alternate self from the way he reacted when she told him her name earlier.

His apartment is homey, and while it looks modern, it has what Daisy thinks of as retro touches, including, she's amused to notice, some of the same Captain America and WW2 memorabilia that her Phil owns. She's relieved to see the Cap stuff, though, as it means this isn't a universe without superpowers. 

"Why don't I show you to the guest room, and you can get some rest, while I make a start on that meal?" Coulson suggests.

"Thanks," Daisy mumbles; if she's being honest, she's ready to drop.

He leads her down the hall to a bedroom which Daisy barely looks at – all she cares about is the bed.

"Would you like some help with your boots?" he asks, gesturing at her arm in its sling.

Despite his earlier flirting, Coulson's tone is more diffident now.

"Yeah, thanks." She sits on the side of the bed, and tries not to think too much about the image he presents kneeling at her feet. She stands up again once he's got her boots off, and tries to remove her utility belt. He slides his hands over hers and takes over, and she desperately wants to kiss him. Once the belt's gone, she fumbles with the pants of her field suit, and he blushes, which makes Daisy chuckle.

"Relax, Coulson, I'm wearing shorts under the pants."

He nods, swallows, then helps her to slide the fabric down her legs. Daisy sits on the bed again once the parts are down as far as her knees, and Coulson ends up on his knees again as he pulls them the rest of the way off.

"You look pretty good down there, Phil," she says without thinking, then feels her face flush with heat, even as he blushes again.

"Thank you," he says huskily, then clears his throat. "Do you have any specific food requests or any allergies I should be aware of?"

"I could murder a grilled cheese sandwich," she says. "Well – " She swallows, then tells him, "My powers use up my energy so I really need to refuel."

"I'll bring you plenty," he says with an easy smile. "Get some rest."

"How's Ms Dupree?" she asks, suddenly recalling her, and feeling guilty for not remembering her before.

"They took her to another hospital so that her pre-natal team could look after her." He glances at her, his expression unreadable. "She's a colleague. She teaches French at the high school where I teach History as well as coaching the school basketball team. Her wife, Maria, was supposed to be meeting her for lunch after she'd been to the bank."

Daisy feels herself relaxing at his words, at the realisation that Ms Dupree must be queer. "I hope she'll be okay," she says, then stretches out on the bed, realising that she's close to passing out. She's vaguely aware of Coulson leaving, but she's soundly asleep within moments.

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She's not sure how long she's slept when Coulson wakes her with a knock on the door.

"Come in," she calls, and he sticks his head around the door.

"Daisy, I'm sorry to wake you, but there's an FBI officer here and she wants to talk to you about the bank robbery."

She groans softly and he gives her an apologetic look, which she waves off. "How long was I out?"

He checks his wrist watch. "About two and a half hours."

She groans again, then sits up and rubs a hand over her face. She scowls at the sling holding her arm still, and wishes she had a change of clothes, or time to take a shower. Then she decides the FBI officer will just have to take her as she comes.

"Could you give me a hand getting my pants back on?" she asks, feeling a little embarrassed at having to make the request.

"Of course." He comes in and grabs the pants from the chair on which she vaguely remembers him putting them, then helps her to get them on. When he stands up to settles them on her waist, she puts a hand on his shoulder, and he looks up, a question in his eyes, so she leans in and kisses him.

"Daisy." He gasps her name, then wraps his left arm across her back for long enough to kiss her back, then says, "We'd better not keep Officer Morse waiting."

She sighs, then leads the way out of the bedroom; some sixth sense (her 'QSP', possibly) makes her glance back at Phil, and she sees him adjusting his erection within his jeans, and she feels heat flush her face.

She spends the next forty minutes going over the events at the bank, answering Bobbi Morse's questions (and the fact that this universe's version of Bobbi doesn't make the interview any less tedious), then she rests her forehead on the kitchen table.

Coulson comes back from seeing Officer Morse out, and he strokes his fingertips across the nape of her neck. "When I knew you before, you had long brown hair and bangs," he says quietly.

Daisy sits up quickly. "I'm not from here," she says. "I didn't want to get into it with the FBI, but I'm actually from a parallel Earth."

"Ah," he says, then pulls out the chair he'd been sitting on before, and settles beside her. "It seemed obvious to me that you'd recognised me, but when you didn't say anything about what happened before, I wasn't sure if you were too embarrassed, or what." He rubs a finger over his top lip. "Then you kissed me, after flirting with me, and I figured you did want to pick up where we'd left off."

"I'm sorry, Coulson," she says contritely. "I guess I have some stuff I need to sort out with my version of Phil Coulson."

"I didn't mind," he says, and she can't help snickering. 

"Yeah, I noticed how much you enjoyed it."

The tips of his ears turn red, but he doesn’t look away, instead he smirks.

She's about to explain further when her stomach gurgles loudly, and he gets up quickly. "Let's eat and talk," he suggests, and she can't argue since she's absolutely ravenous.

He brings her a bowl of spicy tomato soup and a plate full of chunks of baguette, which she eats as decorously as she can. After that he serves up two grilled cheese sandwiches together with a bowl of salad and another bowl full of potato chips. His piece de resistance is apple pie, still warm from the oven, with scoops of soft serve ice cream melting on top.

His own meal consists of one grilled cheese with some salad, and a serving of apple pie and ice cream. She notices that he's clearly delighted by how heartily she eats whatever he puts in front of her, and thinks of her Phil making her grilled cheese after she broke all the bones in her arms, and then again at the Retreat after he took her there.

As they eat, Daisy tells him something about her experiences as both an Inhuman and a SHIELD agent, then he tells her about 'his' Daisy: he'd met her four years ago when she'd saved him from being mugged. It had been a bitter cold winter and she'd been living in a van without a heater, so he'd persuaded her to stay in his guest room. He admits that she'd only slept in there for one night, however, before joining him in his bed. He looks a bit embarrassed when he confesses that he'd fallen for her, and that the six and a half days that she stayed in his apartment with him had constituted the best relationship he'd had for years. Then the weather had got a bit warmer, and she'd gone back to her van, insisting that she didn't like accepting charity handouts.

"It wasn't just charity," he tells Daisy, his expression a mixture of earnest sincerity and hurt, and she guesses that he had actually fallen far harder for her alternative than that Daisy had realised.

"The last I heard she was planning to investigate the guy who goes by the name of the Devil of Hell's Kitchen," Coulson tells her. "I tried to track her down, even went to the expense of hiring a private detective, but he had no luck."

"I'm so sorry," she tells him. She wonders if her alternative managed to catch up with Matt Murdoch (assuming it's the same guy who's using that name in this parallel).

He shrugs, and tries to smile, but Daisy can see that he's bothered by her alternate self's disappearance. "I'm not her," she tells him, and he shakes his head.

"I know. And you mentioned having issues to sort out with your Coulson, but I just wondered if it would hurt for us to take comfort in each other until you go back?"

"Won't that make things worse?" she asks. A large part of her wants to accept his offer, but she really doesn't want to hurt him.

He shrugs again. "Maybe. I don't know."

She thinks about it. It's pretty messed up, she reckons, but on the other hand, he wants her in a way her Phil never has, and likely never will, for all that they flirt a lot again now they're field partners. She sighs. "I think it's kinda messed up," she tells him. "But I'm not gonna lie – I want you."

His face lights up and she gets up from her chair, moves around the table, and settles on his lap. He wraps his arms around her and she doesn't hesitate to lean in and kiss him.

He kisses her back as he runs a thumbnail up and down her spine beneath her tank. She shudders from want, her sex aching and growing wet, and he soon stands up and carries her along the hall and into the master bedroom.

He lowers her down onto the bed, carefully frees her arm from the sling, then strips her, and she can sense his arousal building up, but he makes no move to fuck her just yet. Instead, he spreads her legs, moves down the bed to lie between them, then ducks his head and begins to eat her out. She comes hard twice, objects in his room rattling slightly each time, and soon after that he strips off his jeans and sweater, then his boxers before he climbs over her.

She welcomes the weight of his body over hers, and moans softly as he slides his engorged cock into her. He doesn't fuck her, though – it's too tender to be called anything but love-making, and she's very aware of the implications, but she wants this, wants his thick hard cock sliding deeply into her slick heat.

They move slowly together, mindful of Daisy's healing arm, and she watches the intent expression on his face, the impossibly tender look in his eyes as he thrusts, withdraws, then thrusts again.

Her third orgasm seems to last forever, then Coulson's coming inside her, and it feels too good to be real. He rolls off her, then slides up beside her, encouraging her to rest her head on his shoulder so they can cuddle, and she'll admit that she'd totally pegged Phil Coulson as a post-coital cuddler.

They don't talk, they just lie snuggled up for some time, and Daisy's dozing lightly when Coulson reluctantly says, "I need to go and finish grading some papers for a class tomorrow."

She fights the impulse to whine, or urge him to stay, and eases her body away from his. "I may go back to sleep," she admits, giving him a rueful look.

"You're allowed," he tells her, his smile reassuring. "I'll understand. I'll try not to wake you when I come back, assuming you're still asleep."

"Okay." She leans over and gives him a long, lingering kiss, which makes him groan.

"Daisy. Not. Helping." He spaces the words out to emphasise them, and she chuckles guiltily.

"Sorry."

He climbs off the bed and she watches unashamedly as he pulls on a t-shirt and a pair of sweatpants. His cock's half hard, she notices, and she wishes she could him pin him to the bed and suck on it until he's fully hard, then ride him.

"I should tell you that last time – I mean, when I came here from the previous parallel Earth – I felt a compulsion to return to the – well, portal, I guess – and it came in the middle of the night."

He looks startled, then concerned, before he nods. "For your sake, I hope you get longer than that here so that your arm can heal more. I know you said you heal faster as an Inhuman, but what if you're thrown into another violent or dangerous situation?"

"Then I'll have to deal with it," she says, a bit forcefully. "Sorry, Phil, that wasn't fair."

He comes back to the bed and sits on the edge, resting his left hand on her thigh, and for a moment she thinks about her Phil and his prosthetic hand.

"It's okay, Daisy," he says softly. "Listen, I know you're a superhero on your Earth, but you still need time to heal, and sleep, and leisure time."

"Yeah," she says. It feels a bit weird to hear him call her a superhero. Despite the media's persistence in calling her 'Quake' when she was away from SHIELD, she's never really thought of herself as a superhero – she's a SHIELD agent (who happens to be Inhuman).

She shakes off her introspection, then curls her fingers over his. "Phil, you should go and do your grading, or I'm going to strip you naked again, then suck your dick until you're begging me to let you come."

Coulson's startled expression makes her realise just what she's threatening/promising, and she feels her face heating up. He leans down, though, and kisses her pretty fiercely, with lots of tongue.

"If I can get it finished in an hour, will you do that?" he asks, breathless and clearly aroused.

She cups his cock, which is fully hard now, through the fabric of his sweats, and squeezes lightly. "If you're a very good boy, Phil," she tells him.

He grabs her wrist and gently pulls her hand away, then turns it over so he can kiss her palm, before he says, "Going right now," and he hurries out.

She chuckles a little, rather amazed by his reaction, then makes herself comfortable determined to get some more sleep.

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She wakes when he slips back into the bed, and mumbles, "Time izzit?"

"9.45," he says, and he sounds irritated, she thinks.

She opens her eyes to look at him as he shifts restlessly beside her; his vibrations read as annoyed. "That's more than an hour gone, isn't it?" She hadn't checked the time before he went away to grade those papers, but she has a feeling it was around 6.30.

He sighs, then drags a hand down his face. "Yeah. A couple of my kids really messed up their papers, and since these are their midterm papers, I emailed them both to talk to them about their options. I don't want to have to fail them if I can help it – they're both good students, very hard-working, but from impoverished backgrounds – doing well at school will improve not only their prospects, but their families' too. Anyway, by the time I'd dealt with them both in turn, it was already 8.30."

She snuggles up to him. "Since you're such a tender-hearted baby deer, I'm going to give you that promised treat anyway."

"Baby deer?" he asks quizzically.

"Yeah, Phil, you're definitely a sad, yet sexy, baby deer right now."

He chuckles, then shakes his head. "Someone's watched too much Parks & Rec," he says, "but I'm not going to turn down your oh-so-kind offer."

She smirks. "Good." She sits up, then tugs him up into a sitting position too. 

"Daisy, your arm," he says worriedly.

"Told you I heal fast."

While he's still staring in amazement, she gets his t-shirt off, then runs her hands down his chest, enjoying the feeling of his muscles, and hair, and skin beneath her palms. She reflects that her Phil might not let her do this, assuming they were ever in an intimate relationship, because of the scar she knows he bears on his chest.

She leans in and kisses Coulson, nipping at his bottom lip, then she tweaks his nipple, and he gasps and moans.

"Oh you like that, do you?" she teases, and repeats the action on the other nipple, then she licks them both, soothing them carefully.

"Lie back," she tells him, and he obeys, which makes her wonder if he really just likes being given orders in bed, or if he's got a bit of a submissive streak – the two things aren't exactly the same, she knows.

She taps his hip, and he lifts his ass so she can get his sweatpants off. She tosses them onto the floor where his t-shirt's already lying, then she sits crosslegged beside him and stares at his cock. It's still mostly flaccid, she notices, and that thrills her – she likes the idea of working him up to a full erection. She changes position so that she's lying next to him, her head level with his groin.

He whimpers when she sucks on his balls, then draws her tongue along the length of his dick as it begins to thicken and lengthen in response to her attentions. It doesn't take her long to get him to full mast, then she tells him to hold onto the rail at the head of the bed.

He obeys instantly, his eyes already glazing with desire, and once his hands are in position, she begins to work his cock with her tongue and teeth. He groans loudly a couple of times once she starts sucking on his dick, then his hips buck up, entirely involuntarily she suspects, and she begins to work him towards a climax. Of course, because of her ability to 'read' his vibrations, she can get him very close to orgasm then back off before he actually climaxes.

By the time he's nearly come for the second time, Coulson's audibly desperate – begging and pleading with her to let him come. She decides to take him over the edge next time, and he comes with a shout, her name the only coherent word she can make out as he babbles wildly, his hips pumping as she swallows down his release.

His whole body goes limp afterwards, which is when she notices he's crying. She feels a bit panicky at the sight of his tears, thinking she's hurt him somehow, but he shakes his head, then pulls her body against his side as he recovers from his orgasm.

"It's okay," he tells her, his voice a little husky. "This is a not uncommon reaction for me, I promise." 

She gazes at him for several moments, then nods. "I'm glad you're okay."

He chuckles. "I'm better than okay. That was pretty intense, but very enjoyable."

"Good."

He persuades her to let him eat her out – not that she needs persuading – after she admits that she's aroused by getting him off, and afterwards they share a shower.

She's just finished drying herself off when she feels the same strange compulsion to return to the 'portal' in the building opposite the bank.

Coulson looks saddened when she tells him, but he simply nods, then he calls her a cab before they get dressed again.

He accompanies her to the building, although they detour long enough for Daisy to collect her jacket and gauntlets from the roof of the bank building; he holds her hand the whole way, and when they reach the hallway where the 'portal' room is, he gives her a long kiss before she prepares to pass through the portal.

This whole situation is definitely messed up, she decides and she hopes very hard that she can get back to her Phil this time.

Almost as soon as she's inside the room, the blue light envelops her, and when it dissipates, she's somewhere new again.


	3. Third Parallel

**[Third Parallel]**

When the blue light disappears, Daisy finds herself overlooking a busy street, and notices that there's a restaurant opposite called _May's_. That seems like too much of a coincidence to be an actual coincidence, so she makes her way down to street level, and she's about to cross the road when gunfire erupts from further up the block. People in the street yell or scream, then begin running away, but Daisy turns and races up the street, crossing easily as motorists abandon their cars in obvious panic. She notices as she runs that most of the people fleeing past her aren't white, and she has a sudden, horrible thought that the gunfire is coming from the local PD, and she really hopes that's not the case.

She reaches the scene quickly, and is horrified to see two very familiar faces above the hands holding the guns: Grant Ward and Sunil Bakshi; they're shouting at people not to move, and Daisy barely refrains from rolling her eyes.

She moves across the street more stealthily now, keeping low behind the abandoned cars, and when she's rather closer to the pair, she pauses to take stock of her surroundings in more detail: Ward and Bakshi are outside a jewellery store, and they've got a black man face down on the sidewalk in front of them – Ward, in fact, has his foot on the man's back, and it's only when the hostage turns his head slightly that Daisy catches sight of his profile, and realises that the hostage is actually Andrew Garner.

_Well this sucks,_ she thinks, properly annoyed now.

She's just wondering how much closer she can get when she hears two very familiar voices behind her.

"Andrew, no!" cries Melinda May, sounding anguished, as Phil Coulson, clad in a chef's whites shouts, "Melinda, don't!" and grabs her, physically restraining her from getting any closer.

Daisy quickly looks around again, and sees what she needs – she doesn't want to try to vibrate their guns apart and knock them down – that trick definitely needs to be refined during training first. Instead, she leans sideways and aims her powers at a stack of empty wooden crates piled up at the curbside.

A blast of vibrating air hits the stack with force, and they fly up hard and fast to smack into the faces of Ward and Bakshi. The latter's gun goes off, and Daisy thrusts vibrating air hard at the bullets flying towards her, and Coulson and May, whom she can feel have moved closer to her position. She wishes she had Joey's metal melting powers, but she'll have to work with the powers she's been given, and she flicks the bullets sideways at a fire hydrant, which, with a certain inevitable predictability, explodes, soaking everyone in the immediate vicinity, including Ward and Bakshi, who are sprawled on their backs across the sidewalk.

May pushes past Daisy and hurries to help Andrew up, anxiously asking him if he's hurt, while Coulson stops beside her as she leans against an abandoned Uber, trying hard not to slide down into the gutter.

"That was amazing!" he exclaims, then asks, "Hey, are you okay?"

She tries to answer that, but the words don't come out, and as her vision starts to go grey, she can't help wishing she was back home again. 

When she comes to, Daisy finds herself in what she suspects must be Melinda May's restaurant. Andrew's sitting at a booth across the aisle, and May is beside him, fussing worriedly. It's such an unusual sight because May – her May – is never that open usually, and she finds herself wondering if this is how her May was before Bahrain.

"Oh good, you're awake," says Coulson, and she looks up from her spot lying on the red leather bench to see him looking down at her in obvious relief.

May pats Andrew's arm, then comes across to Daisy's booth. "Are you okay?" she asks, then helps Daisy to sit up before flinging her arms around her in a tight hug.

"Yeah, I just – I've been overdoing stuff a bit lately," she says, feeling rather sheepish in the face of her three favourite people giving her such anxious looks.

"You've got a wan look," Coulson tells her, and she can't help it, the words are out before she can consider their wisdom: "Geez, Phil, way to flatter me."

The others look startled, and she groans, then puts her forehead down on the table and bangs it gently a couple of times.

"I'm pretty certain that's not going to help," Andrew tells her from across the aisle, and she rolls her head and neck so she can look at him. He's barely concealing a smirk, she notices.

"No," she agrees, and straightens up.

"You should eat something," Coulson says, and gets to his feet. "Stay there."

He hurries away and Andrew rolls his eyes. "Watch out, Mother Hen mode has been activated."

His tone is a mixture of fond amusement and resignation, and she can't help chuckling.

"Is there anyone you'd like us to call for you?" May asks.

"No, I'm on my own," Daisy tells her as Coulson hurries back to join them.

Andrew observes, "We all should change out of our wet clothes."

May agrees with him, so Coulson sets the tray down, then helps Daisy up so they can head upstairs to May and Andrew's apartment. She learns that Coulson keeps a couple of spare shirts and pants there in case food gets spilled on him when he's cooking (they'd had an apprentice who was incapable of going a single day without spilling something on chef). May lends Daisy an outsize sweater (something she can't quite picture her May even owning, never mind wearing), and some sweatpants, and because she's shivering violently by this point, May insists that Daisy take a shower before she gets dressed again.

When she comes out of the bathroom wrapped in a fuzzy bathrobe and in search of a comb or brush for her hair, she's startled by Coulson coming in with the tray in his hands.

"Here," he says with some urgency. "Eat this before it gets cold." He sets it down on the coffee table by the couch, and gestures.

"I was looking for a comb or brush," she tells him since May and Andrew have disappeared, presumably back downstairs to the restaurant.

"Come with me," he says and grabs her hand. She lets him without considering the peculiarity of him effectively holding hands with a stranger.

He leads her down the hall to the master bedroom, gently pushes her down onto the end of the bed, then rummages around on May's dresser for her comb and hairbrush.

"Are you gay?" she blurts out, then regrets it immediately, slapping a hand over her mouth while giving him an apologetic look.

He chuckles softly. "Bisexual, actually." He says it easily, as if it's unimportant.

"I'm sorry. It's none of my business."

He shrugs. "I don't mind you asking. Do you want me to do your hair?"

"Uh, sure." She watches as he toes off his shoes, then climbs up onto the end of the bed to sit crosslegged behind her.

"You've probably worked out that Melinda and Andrew are married," he says as he begins to work on her damp hair. "We all met in college. I thought I was gay when I was younger, and I hit on Andrew, but he only had eyes for Melinda at that stage. They started dating, but I often went on dates with them, even if I didn't have a date of my own. Then one year, we went to a Halloween party – this was before Melinda and Andrew were married – and I dressed up as a 19th century courtesan – female."

He meets her eyes in the reflection of the mirror in front of them, and she wonders if he's checking for her reaction, which is to wish passionately that she'd seen him in that outfit.

"I bet you looked fantastic," she says, and he chuckles.

"Andrew certainly thought so. We ended up going back to Melinda's and having sex – all three of us. These days we get together a couple of times a month and fuck each other, but the rest of the time I date other men or women."

Daisy tries not to gape at him – she can't imagine her Phil being this free with information about his sex life – she hasn't forgotten his "that's classified" response to her question about his relationship with Camilla Reyes.

"Now I've shocked you," Coulson says, his hands resting lightly on her shoulders.

"No. Not shocked," she tells him earnestly. "Just surprised." When she sees him raise his eyebrows in the mirror, she elaborates. "We've only just met."

"Have we?"

"Um yes. Why would you doubt that?"

"Well, you look an awful lot like a young woman I knew a few years ago. Her name was Skye, well, that was the name she gave to me and Melinda. She used to come here two or three times a week, taking care of people's computers and stuff – often for free. I don't know if you noticed, but this is a pretty poor neighbourhood, financially speaking, and Skye, who was homeless herself and lived in a van, would bring her clients here to do their work since Melinda and Andrew both grew up near here, and understood what the situation was like for the people who live here."

His expression softens, she notices, and wonders why.

"They each won a scholarship to a good university – Melinda to study business and economics, and Andrew to study psychology. When they graduated they each, independently of the other, decided they wanted to live and work in this neighbourhood, and they've been very successful. Andrew has some richer clients, but he mostly treats the poorer people who live here. One of Melinda's philosophies is 'give back and pay it forward'. She used to give Skye a meal on those days when she was in the neighbourhood."

He studies her reflection for a bit, then shakes his head. "No, you're not her – it's not just that your hair is short and dark now, or that you're older." He sighs softly and she reaches up to hold his hands where they still rest on her shoulders.

"I'm sorry," she says quietly. "You loved her, didn't you?"

He nods. "Oh yeah, I had it really bad. We had a bit too much to drink one night, celebrating because she'd won a prize from Stark Industries, and she seduced me. We spent most of the night fucking, and I thought this was it – the beginning of new things for me, and for us, but after she left that morning, she didn't come back. We haven't seen her since. Melinda and Andrew have helped me to try to track her down, but to no avail."

"I'm so sorry, Phil," she says and twists around so that she can lean in and kiss him, just a light kiss on the mouth. 

He moans, then pushes her robe open so he can get his hands on her breasts, then he falls backwards onto the bed, pulling her with him.

They kiss frantically, Coulson's hands roaming all over her body, and Daisy grinds herself against his rapidly stiffening cock, and is just thinking about unfastening his slacks so she can get it free when he gasps, as if someone had doused him in cold water.

She lifts her head. "What?" she asks worriedly. His hands have gone still, then they drop to either side of his body, and she instantly misses their warmth, but she gets the message loud and clear. She climbs off him, then pulls the robe back around herself, before she grabs the clothes that May's loaned her until hers are dry. She goes into the bathroom to get dressed.

As she finishes getting dressing, Coulson calls through the door. "I'm sorry. Can we talk?"

"What's to discuss?" she asks simply as she opens the door. "You made yourself perfectly clear."

She relents, though, when she sees how utterly miserable he looks. "I'll eat, you talk," she suggests, and he nods, then carries the tray of food to the kitchen.

"Let me heat this up again," he says, and she sits at the kitchen table and watches him. She's not sure what's going on with him, but his vibrations are full of conflict.

He sets a bowl of thick stew in front of her and she unrolls the spoon and fork from the napkin in which they're wrapped and begins to eat. He paces back and forth a bit, then comes to sit opposite her.

"I'm sorry," he repeats.

"Phil, you're entitled to change your mind, same as anyone else."

"Yes, but – " 

"But what?" she asks gently when he trails off, wringing his hands together in a manner she finds very uncharacteristic.

"I want to have sex with you," he says, sounding shaky. "You remind me of Skye a lot, but you're not her, and I don't even know you, but I still want you." He sighs, untangles his fingers, then adds, "This is so fucked up."

She can't help snorting a bit at that, because he doesn't know the half of it. "Let me tell you about fucked up, Phil," she says, and explains the events of the past few days – how she's been moving from one parallel universe to another, and how she's had sex with the two versions of Phil Coulson she's met in each parallel.

"So you and the Phil Coulson on your Earth, you're not involved?" he asks at the end of her recital.

"Not sexually, no. But he's closer to me, in some ways, than any of my previous lovers. He's certainly far more supportive than my most recent ex ever was."

"Are you going to tell him about this when you get back?"

"I think I'll have to," she says. "I don't see how we can continue as we have been, not when I'm harbouring such a strong desire to fuck him senseless."

Coulson licks his lips at her words, and she immediately feels simultaneously bad, and desperate to have him. To save her from thinking about that, she changes the subject. "Maybe I can help you find out where Skye is, or where she went."

He looks surprised by the suggestion. "How?"

"Well, back before I joined SHIELD and got superpowers, I was a hacker. It wouldn't hurt to try looking, at least."

He nods, then checks the time. "I'm off shift for the day. Why don't you come back to my apartment and see what you can dig up?"

"Okay." Daisy knows that it's a bit of a risk, given how much she still wants to fuck him, but she doesn't want to be in Melinda and Andrew's way, either.

He finds a paper sack into which he stuffs her clothes. "We can dry these properly at mine," he tells her, and she nods, then gathers up her gauntlets before taking the parcel from him. He collects together the empty dishes from her meal in order to return them to the kitchen downstairs.

Half an hour later they're settled on his couch, his laptop in front of Daisy. He watches her work, listening attentively as she talks him through what she's doing – which initially consists of working her way through various forums and chat groups, searching for any references to Skye, especially in relation to the prize she won from Stark Industries.

She works for several hours, fuelled by coffee and various snacks that Coulson provides. After a time he stops watching her and switches to working on a tablet, sitting at a table in the corner by the window that looks out onto the street three stories below.

Eventually she finds some threads to follow, although she says nothing to Coulson straight away – she wants to follow the threads until they either dead-end or give her an answer, just in case the answer's bad.

Finally, at one in the morning, when Coulson's fallen asleep on the other end of the couch, she stands up and stretches, easing the ache in her lower back, then rubbing at her still-not-fully-healed shoulder.

She leans over to Coulson and shakes him awake, and he frowns at her, clearly confused for a moment before he recalls what she's doing in his apartment.

"You found something," he says, his tone very definite.

"I've found three things," she tells him, and he raises his eyebrows at her. She sits back down at the laptop, then beckons him closer, and he comes to sit beside her.

"First, I found a forum where Skye's a regular. She talked about trading in her van for a newer model after getting the prize money from Stark Industries. I found a photo of it which included a clear view of the number plate. After doing some hacking, I found a shot of it from a security camera in LA, which fits with her declared intention to go there in order to investigate what she referred to as 'dodgy bullshit'. The security camera shot's from 3 weeks ago, where Skye had parked up about half a block from a privately funded medical lab."

"A medical lab?" Coulson repeats, sounding baffled.

"Yup. They've been doing shady medical experiments on vulnerable people," she tells him.

"What's the third thing," he asks, and she can hear the anxiety in his voice – she's sure he's concerned that Skye's been captured and experimented on.

"A police report about a Jane Doe found unconscious and badly beaten in an alley 4 days ago, about a block away from where Skye's van was photographed. The description fits Skye."

He grips her arm tightly. "It's her? It's really her?"

"It seems very possible," she tells him. The look of mingled hope and anxiety in his eyes makes her look away – his emotions are so nakedly displayed she feels like a voyeur.

"I have to get to LA," he says, standing up, then looking stricken at her. "I – That is – Will you come with me, please?"

She thinks she should refuse – she's been half expecting to find herself compelled to return to the 'portal' for the last couple of hours, but she hasn't felt even a twinge, so she nods. "If that's what you want."

"I do," he says firmly. "Please."

"Okay. Do you have transport?"

He blushes, and she almost blurts out, "Don't tell me it's a red convertible called Lola", but she restrains herself.

"I've got a motorbike," he says, and she nods, swallows, then says,

"Hadn't you better call, text, or email your friends to let them know where you're going?"

He nods. "Yes, you're right. Good thinking." He seems dazed and she wonders if it's a good idea for them to go haring off like this in the early hours of the morning, but she doesn't say anything to dissuade him. She picks up the paper bag containing her clothes, which he'd dried for her earlier in the evening, and goes to his bathroom to get changed. Better to be prepared, she decides.

DJ-PC-DJ-PC-DJ

They take it in turns to ride in front on his bike, with Daisy riding pillion first. She wouldn't have believed it's possible to sleep while on the back of a motorbike, but somehow she does.

They stop for gas, the bathroom, coffee, and muffins at 6am, after which Coulson rides pillion. He dozes, his arms wrapped securely around her torso; she can read his vibrations well enough to know when he falls into a deeper sleep, and to wake him when he starts to have a nightmare.

They break for lunch, the bathroom, and more coffee, and Daisy insists they take an hour to catch some proper sleep. Coulson's too stupefied to argue, and she books them into a cheap motel – she's fairly sure the clerk suspects she's on the job, but she doesn't care, all she wants is to lie down for an hour. They fumble their boots off, then stretch out side by side, after Coulson's set the alarm on his cell phone to go off after 50 minutes.

When they wake she's not hugely surprised to find they're spooning together, Coulson's back against her chest and her arms around his torso. He seems a bit embarrassed, but Daisy can't see why – it's not like he's woken with an erection, and if she's honest, cuddling up with Coulson is the best way to sleep as far as she's concerned. They take it in turns to use the bathroom, then he goes to get some more coffee while Daisy returns the keycard for their room.

The next time they stop, Coulson suggests getting a room for the night so they'll be freshly rested tomorrow, and she agrees easily. They could have flown to LA, of course, but it would've cost about $400 and Daisy doesn't have any money – driving is cheaper.

They arrive in LA late in the evening of the second day, and head straight to the hospital where the detective in charge of Skye's case is waiting for them – something that Daisy had arranged that morning before they got back on the road. She'd been only half surprised to learn that the policeman in charge of the case was one Alphonso Mackenzie – and Coulson, when she'd explained about her Mack, back in her universe, had asked if she thought the Universe was sending her a message.

"That or it's got a really weird sense of humour," she'd told him, which had make him chuckle, albeit weakly.

They'd shared a bed as well as a room the night before, and had spent the night spooned up together from the outset. Coulson had seemed a bit less embarrassed about it, that morning, even though he had woken up with an erection. Daisy had done her best to ignore it, beyond suggesting that he take the first turn at showering, at which he'd blushed, before disappearing into the bathroom.

Now she's glad they had stopped because Coulson looks less exhausted and more capable of keeping it together. 

She greets Inspector Mackenzie as if he's a stranger, not a good friend, then stays in the background as the detective talks to Coulson. She can't help feeling a lump in her throat, though, when a nurse hurries up to tell Mack that Skye has literally just woken up for the first time since she was found, and her first words were "Where's Phil?"

"This is where I bow out," Daisy tells Coulson immediately, and since they've already discussed this very matter over lunch, he simply nods, hugs her, then gives her his motorbike keys. She'll ride it back to New York for him, and leave it at his apartment, and he will drive back to New York with Skye in her van once she's fit enough to leave hospital.

"I can't thank you enough," he tells her, and she can tell he's close to breaking down.

"It's okay, Phil," she says. "Go and be with Skye, and be happy – for my sake, if not your own."

He nods, gives her a brief peck on the cheek, then hurries off after Mack and the nurse. Daisy sees Mack glance back, her expression curious, and wonders if he's just noticed how much Daisy looks like Skye.

She swallows, then turns around, and heads outside. She's going to spend tonight in a motel, then ride back to New York in the morning – provided the compulsion to get back to the 'portal' doesn't overtake her before then.

She doesn't want to admit, even to herself, that she's jealous of her alternate self – it's weird to feel jealous of herself, but she is more than a little envious. That feeling, though, makes her more determined than ever to get back home to her Earth, because she really needs to talk to her Phil.

She makes the trip back in easy stages, stopping early enough on the second day to ensure she gets plenty of time to sleep – she's still playing catch-up from getting little sleep the first night they were on the road, not to mention that she's also still recovering from using her powers against Ward and Bakshi.

When she finally parks the bike in Coulson's spot by his apartment she feels relieved to be back, anxious to leave this alternate Earth, and grateful, albeit reluctantly, that she and this version of Coulson didn't have sex after all.

She walks up the block to May's, aware that the compulsion to return to the 'portal' has begun, and stops in at May's long enough to hand over Coulson's motorcycle helmet and keys, and to let her know that Skye was awake when she left LA.

"We've just got off the phone with Phil," Andrew tells her. "He told us the good news."

"I'm glad," Daisy says sincerely.

"We're grateful to you for finding Skye," May tells her. "We'd like you to come and have dinner with us tonight so we can thank you properly."

The looks that both May and Andrew are giving her, along with the feeling of their vibrations tells her that their thanks will be more than verbal, and she's surprised by the pang of disappointment she feels at having to refuse their offer. (She's never considered doing anything about her crush on her May.)

"I have to get going," Daisy tells them. "I'm sorry. I'd love to come and have dinner with you, but I literally cannot stay. Phil will tell you more when he returns."

They both look disappointed by her refusal, but they don't try to persuade her to stay, and she walks out of the restaurant as quickly as she can without actually running, then makes her way back into the building in which she arrived.

She runs up the stairs, two at a time, then down the hallway and into the room where the portal is. Almost immediately a blue light fills the room, and Daisy thinks, _I want to go home. Please let me go home._ But when she opens her eyes, she discovers that she has, once again, traversed space-time to somewhere else, and this is not home.

"I don't know what the hell you think you're playing at, but I'm getting seriously annoyed now," she shouts into the empty room, then turns on her heel and stalks out.


	4. Fourth Parallel

**[Fourth Parallel]**

As she stomps down the stairs it occurs to Daisy, rather belatedly she supposes, that she has saved Phil Coulson's life (and the lives of others, too) in each parallel Earth that she's visited, and she can't help wondering if she's going to be doing this for the rest of her life, because it's a fact that even when he's not a SHIELD agent, Phil Coulson somehow manages to be in danger.

When she steps out into the street this time she's surprised to find it's dark, and she wonders if that somehow corresponds to the time back on her Earth. Then she dismisses the thought as she pauses to look around her and get her bearings.

Just as she's wondering how she's going to locate this Earth's Phil Coulson a car comes racing around the corner of the street, takes the corner on two wheels, in fact, before it screams past her with another car in hot pursuit. The second car has a flashing blue light fixed to the roof, which she knows means it's a car belonging to a plainclothes police officer. As Daisy wonders what's going on, a man leans out of the passenger side window of the car that's being pursued and fires at the car behind. She can't help flinching when the bullets strike the car, and she's just noticed that it's moving more erratically when the man with the gun fires a second time, and the driver of the pursuing car loses control. It flips up into the air and Daisy has no idea if Coulson's in the car or not, but she doesn't hesitate to use her powers to slow down the car's upward momentum – which is a far greater drain on her powers than stopping a human being from falling, and certainly more of a strain than she'd anticipated so that she struggles to bring it back to the ground relatively safely. It lands with a loud bang, but she hopes it's no more than superficially damaged. 

She'd go and check but she's on her knees before she's aware of it, feeling utterly drained of energy and strength, before she topples sideways, bumping her head against a mailbox as she goes down. She'd swear at her bad luck if she had the breath to speak, but she passes out instead.

When she opens her eyes again it's to two familiar and very dear faces, and for a moment she forgets she's on a parallel Earth because she stares at Antoinne Triplett, then says, "You're dead."

He chuckles, a rich, warm sound that always makes her think of sunshine for some reason. "Thought I was going to be," he tells her. "Mighty glad I'm not, thanks to you."

She stares up at him, noting the two long, shallow cuts on his cheek.

"Jemma's going to be pissed at you for spoiling your pretty face," she tells him.

Trip looks startled, and Coulson asks, "Just how hard did you hit your head?"

"Not as hard as you, Phil. What's with the Achilles' Eyebrow, eh?"

It's Coulson's turn to look startled this time, and Trip's chuckle is a bit weaker now. 

"She's got you there, sir," he says, his tone teasing and fond. He turns his attention back to Daisy. "Can you sit up?"

"Might need a hand or two," she tells him, then looks back at Coulson. "Can you spare me one?"

"I think we should call for an ambulance," he says. "Get her head examined."

"Aw, no," Daisy protests. "The only person allowed to examine my head, Phil, is Andrew." She sees him exchange a concerned look with Trip, and makes an effort – which feels huge – to concentrate and focus. "No hospital, please. Just need sleep and food. Lots and lots of sleep and food. Please."

The two of them each slide an arm around her and help her up to her feet. Daisy sways dizzily, aware that all the vibrations in her vicinity are muted by how much she's drained her powers.

They help her over to their car, which isn't too damaged, fortunately, and manoeuvre her into the back seat.

"I'll drive," Trip says, and Coulson nods, then joins her in the back of the car, while Trip settles in the driver's seat. Coulson puts his arm around her to keep her steady.

"You smell nice," she tells him, dimly aware that she seems to have lost the ability to filter her more personal thoughts.

"Thank you," he says, his tone wryly amused.

"Why don't we stop at my place?" Trip suggests. "Just to let Jemma check her out."

"Will she mind?" Coulson asks him.

"Naw, the twins are finally sleeping through the night."

"Then yes," Coulson says as Daisy asks, "You and Jemma have twins? I bet they're so cute."

This observation earns her chuckles from Trip and a smile from Coulson.

"They've very cute," the latter agrees. "I keep telling him it's illegal for kids to be that cute."

"I'm so happy for you and Jemma," Daisy tells Trip earnestly. "You totally deserve it after everything." This statement earns her confused looks from them both, and she thinks, _Shut up, Daisy_ , and clamps her mouth shut.

Coulson and Trip seem content to let her keep her silence as they drive through the dark streets until they pull up outside a nice town house in the suburbs.

They climb out of the car, and Daisy stumbles, realising just how much she needs to rest and refuel. Coulson steadies her, then when she stumbles a second time, makes a grumbling sort of noise before actually picking her up and carrying her after Trip.

"You sure know how to sweep a girl off her feet, Phil," she teases, then winces as she registers just what she'd said.

He chuckles, though, and she relaxes against his chest, wishing that her Phil might carry her in this way some time. 

As they enter the house Jemma hurries into the hallway, uttering muted exclamations of horror at the state of the two men, and the fact that Coulson's carrying an unknown young woman in his arms. Trip calms her down, then explains about Daisy's collapse on the sidewalk after she'd saved their lives.

"Bring her through, Detective Coulson," Jemma says, her tone brisk and professional.

Daisy finds herself carried down the hall into a room at the back of the house which Jemma obviously uses as an examination room. After Coulson's carefully lowered her down onto the side of the exam bed, he and Trip disappear, and Jemma asks, "Name please?" which momentarily confuses Daisy until she recalls where she is.

"Daisy," she says, and is relieved when Jemma just nods and doesn't ask for any further personal details. Instead, she concentrates on examining Daisy's head, while simultaneously establishing what Daisy recalls of recent events.

So Daisy explains about the car chase she'd witnessed, and how she'd used her powers to save Trip and Coulson from certain death; during her account, Daisy sees Jemma's professional calm wavering a bit, and does her best to reassure the other woman that both men are fine aside from minor injuries.

By the time she's finished, Daisy's words are slurring, and she can hardly keep her eyes open, she's so exhausted.

Jemma goes to the door and brings in Coulson and Trip, explaining to them that Daisy needs to go home and sleep.

"No home," she says, making an effort to speak clearly.

Trip and Jemma look concerned, but Coulson seems to take it in his stride, and a few minutes later they're driving across town to what turns out to be his home.

DJ-PC-DJ-PC-DJ

When she wakes in yet another strange bed, Daisy has a moment of panic until she remembers recent events. She stumbles out of the bed, realising that she's only wearing her tank and shorts: her field suit and gauntlets are resting on a plain wooden chair in the corner of the room, with her boots neatly placed underneath the chair.

She makes her way out of the bedroom and into the bathroom, and when she comes back out a short time later, Coulson's leaning against the wall looking pensive and sexy. He's changed out of the dark grey suit he'd been wearing when they met, and is now resplendent in tight black jeans and a black turtle neck, the sleeves pushed up to his elbows, and a sudden surge of desire for him hits her like a hammer blow. She stumbles slightly, and he immediately pushes away from the wall to step in front of her and steady her.

"I was going to ask if you're all right," he says, "but I can see for myself the answer to that's a 'no'."

She chuckles weakly. "Yeah, not really. I need more sleep. But also food."

"Then let me fix you something to eat," he says, and when she nods, he clasps her elbow and guides her to his kitchen.

He gets her to sit down at the table, then offers her a range of snacks from healthy to not so healthy, and when he mentions Little Debbie snack cakes, she immediately accepts, which elicits a chuckle.

"I keep them in for when Trip comes over to watch sports with me," he tells her. "Jemma won't have them in the house."

Daisy laughs softly. "She wouldn't. Does she bake wholesome oat cookies using her Scottish granny's recipe?"

"Yes she does," Coulson says slowly, "but how on Earth do you know that?"

"Ah," she says ruefully. She eats one of the snack cakes and when she reaches for a second, Coulson pulls the pack away from her, his left eyebrow lifted questioningly.

She sighs. "I'll tell you," she says, "but you might not like the answer."

"I'll be the judge of that," he says.

She nods. "Any chance I could have some coffee to help me stay awake? This isn't a short story."

He pours her a cup of coffee from his machine in the corner of the counter then, because he'd never be a cruel man, no matter which universe he's in, he pushes the cakes back her way.

"Thanks." She takes a sip of coffee, then says, "You might want to sit down." 

He pours himself some coffee, then comes to sit beside her, and she gives him the background on herself first, then explains about discovering the possibly-alien artefact that had sent her to three parallel Earths. She leaves out the fact that she had sex with two other versions of him because she doesn't want him to think she has any expectations from him.

She's eaten five of the snack cakes and drunk two mugs of coffee by the time she finishes her account of the last several days.

"That's quite a tale," he observes when she finishes. "I'm not surprised that you're so drained of energy, after all that. I'm going to put together something more substantial for you to eat, and then you should get some sleep." He asks her a few questions to establish if there are any foods she can't eat for any reason, then gets up and heats up some home-made soup he takes from the fridge. He also cuts several thick slices of home-made bread, and brings them both over to the table, along with a bottle of soda.

"While you eat that, I'm going to call the precinct and find out if they've had any luck in finding the two guys we were chasing tonight." He rubs a hand over his face, his skin rasping a little against his stubble, and Daisy feels another surge of desire for him which she does her best to repress.

He leaves her to eat and walks down the hall to the sitting room, pulling out his cell phone as he goes, and she concentrates on eating, and on staying awake.

When Coulson returns, however, she's got her chin resting on her left hand and her eyelids are definitely drooping. "You'd better go to bed," he tells her, and comes around the table to help her to her feet.

She lets him lead her back to the bed, wishing he'd join her, but determined not to make any moves on him, although her resolve is nearly broken when she discovers she's sleeping in his bed because he doesn't have a guest room, and he's planning to sleep on the couch. She offers to swap with him, but isn't surprised when he refuses.

"Get some more sleep, Daisy," he tells her, heading back down the hall with a pair of pale blue cotton pyjamas in his hand.

She doesn't know how long she sleeps before Coulson wakes her from a nightmare in which she's endlessly travelling between parallel Earths, each time arriving just too late to save Phil Coulson's life – often arriving only in time to watch him die right in front of her.

She's sobbing broken-heartedly when he wakes her, and he doesn't appear to hesitate before sitting on the side of the bed and holding her until she eventually stops crying. Once she's calmed down he starts to move away, but she unashamedly begs him to stay with her, and to her relief, he doesn't need any persuasion. She moves across the bed and he climbs in beside her, then draws her against his side. Daisy happily snuggles up with him, and feels herself drifting towards sleep pretty easily, soothed by the vibrations of his body.

When she next wakes in the pre-dawn light she's rather amused to find she and Coulson are being totally clichéd: their legs are tangled together, his cock is pressed firmly against her thigh, and his face is buried in the crook of her neck. Despite this immense provocation, however, she actually tries to pull away from him, but he tightens his hold on her and makes a low grumbling noise of objection.

"Phil," she calls, and cups his cheek, his stubble rasping against the palm of her hand.

"Mmm?" He nuzzles the side of her neck, and she feels as if every nerve ending has been set alight.

"Phil, wake up," she says firmly, then drags her fingertips through the stubble on his cheek.

"Daisy," he says, and she'd swear that he's pouting at her; the fact that he says her name, however, makes her feel better – she'd wondered if, in his sleep, he'd mistaken her for a lover.

"Phil," she says, then moans when he lightly grazes his teeth against her throat. His vibrations are thrumming with arousal, and she feels her own responding rapidly.

He laves his tongue over the spot his teeth had grazed, then kisses along her jaw until his mouth is on hers. She moans as he shifts his body over hers, pressing her down into the mattress; his cock is rock hard and she's desperate to get it inside her.

"Phil, please," she gasps, trying to free him from his pyjama pants. He helps her, both of them struggling until he makes a despairing sort of noise and rolls off her, rapidly stripping off his pyjamas, then getting her borrowed ones off as well. He settles his body over hers again and she moans when he sinks into her, filling and stretching her, then he begins kissing her as he starts to thrust.

She finds herself weeping quietly afterwards, which she futilely tries to hide from him. He panics a bit, thinking he's hurt her, and she reassures him as best she can, but he clearly doesn't understand what's upset her, until she finally admits to the more intimate bits of her recent experiences.

"Oh Daisy." He draws her into an embrace, wrapping his body around hers like he wants to keep her safe. "You need to go back and talk to your Phil."

"I know," she says, "but what if I can't? What if this is some kind of cosmic punishment for what happened with Hive?"

"You've spent too long listening to negative thoughts," he tells her. "I don't believe any god or god-like entity would punish you for doing the things you did when you were under someone else's control."

She sighs. "That's what Mack said."

"And do you generally trust Mack?" he asks gently.

"Yeah." She thinks of the way he'd come to her in the containment pod, after she'd been freed from Hive's Sway, and she has to acknowledge that he's a kind, wise man.

"Then trust him in this, too."

"What do you think I should tell my Phil?" she asks after a couple of minutes. 

He's stroking his hand up and down her back in a very soothing manner and she can't help wondering if her Phil would ever do that for her.

"Tell him the truth," he says immediately, "but don't be surprised if it takes him a while to process it. In his place, I think I'd be a bit weirded out by the idea of my friend having sex with alternate versions of me."

"I just hope he doesn't hate me for it," she says bleakly.

"I don't think he will."

"Would you?" she asks curiously.

He shakes his head. "No. It is pretty weird, but it's not like you and he were already in a sexual relationship. And as for you and I, I already knew you wouldn't be here for long, so you're not violating my trust or anything."

After a few more minutes of silent cuddling, Coulson says, "I need to get up." He sounds reluctant, she thinks, which makes her feel a bit better.

"Did you find out who was trying to get you killed last night?" she asks as they move apart and climb off the bed.

"No, the car was stolen, and the two men were wearing balaclavas and plain, dark clothes." He sighs. "They dumped a young man out of the car before speeding off – which is why we were pursuing them."

He takes the first shower, at Daisy's insistence, and she joins him after showering and dressing. She finds him in the kitchen making coffee while croissants warm in the oven. He's also laid out three different kinds of cereal, and a bowl of fresh strawberries, and he offers to make her anything else she might prefer to eat.

"You're spoiling me," she tells him, and he smirks, looking smug about it. "Maybe I won't bother leaving here."

His eyes go wide, then he crosses the room in two strides and tugs her against him in order to kiss her fiercely. It takes her by surprise in one way, but not in another – she's aware of how passionately her Phil reacts sometimes, even without any sexual element being involved.

He pulls away slowly, his expression a mixture of reluctance and embarrassment. "Sorry. I – uh – "

"You're lonely," she suggests. "It's just as lonely being a cop as a SHIELD agent, if you ask me."

"Yeah," he agrees. 

They settle down for breakfast, Daisy eating two bowls of cereal with strawberries, and two croissants to Phil's one of each. He seems fondly amused by her voracious appetite, and doesn't make her feel guilty about eating so much, or that she has to explain about needing to refuel.

"What do you want to do today?" he asks.

"You," she says, licking from her fingers the raspberry jelly from her second croissant.

He chokes a little on the last of his coffee, then scowls when she gives him a fake innocent look.

"Do you want to come into the precinct with me, or stay here?" he clarifies, and when she pokes her tongue out at him, he leans across the corner of the table and kisses her very emphatically.

"Maybe I should stay here," she suggests once he releases her again.

"Yeah, that – uh – that might be a good idea." He sounds dazed, which amuses her since he's the one who initiated the kissing. "You can borrow my laptop, if you like. Or are you planning to get some more sleep?"

"A little of both."

He nods, "Help yourself to whatever food you want. If you, um, if you feel the compulsion to leave, will you let me know?"

"Of course," she says immediately. "I promise I'm not going to run out on you without saying goodbye first."

"Thank you." He leans over and kisses her more softly and sweetly this time. "I have to go, Trip will be waiting. I'll see you later."

"Take care of yourself out there," she says, suddenly wondering if she should go with him in case she needs to save him from some villain. 

He goes out, and Daisy sits back to finish her coffee, wondering why she's still here. She only seems to feel the compulsion to move on after she's achieved something specific, besides saving the life of Phil Coulson, but she has no idea what the something specific can be this time.

She puts their breakfast dishes in the dishwasher, then gets herself another mug of coffee before making her way to the sitting room where Coulson's laptop is sitting on the table in the corner. She settles down and gets online to take a look at social media and news websites to find out what people in this parallel Earth are discussing.

An hour and another cup of coffee later she gives in to temptation and signs herself into his access to the NYPD computer network. She's curious about the two men from last night, and it doesn't take her long to find the initial reports, which are as sketchy as she'd expected from Coulson's earlier comments. 

After she's read through the reports, and checked the footage from the street cameras, which are also less than helpful, she decides to check whether there are any like crimes.

What she finds when she looks at reports across the entire city, not just the 7th Precinct where Coulson and Trip are based, is very disturbing, and also painfully familiar: a number of black, Asian and Latinx people – mostly men, but a few women too – have been dumped in a similar manner to the young man Coulson told her about at breakfast. Every single dumped victim had recently had some sort of surgical procedure carried out, and further digging into hospital records, both public and private, indicates that none of the dumped victims has had said surgery done in any listed hospital in NYC. Which screams top-secret private medical facility to Daisy, which in turns screams HYDRA and Centipede.

She begins searching for the names HYDRA and Centipede in conjunction with such phrases as 'super soldier', 'super powers', and 'experimental serum', and eventually she gets a hit on 'Centipede', 'super powers', and 'serum' on an obscure page hidden in the depths of a hackers' forum.

She's deeply engrossed in her research when she senses Coulson outside the apartment door, and she looks up to discover it's after one o'clock, and she's pretty hungry again.

He comes in carrying a paper grocery sack and sporting a smirk that, together with the arousal colouring his vibrations, tells her that he's got fun on his mind, and while she's charmed by the idea of him coming home for sex and lunch with her, she knows this information she's dug up is important.

"Daisy? What's wrong?"

"I've found out who took your dumped victim and why," she tells him, then swallows, and he hurries over, dumping the groceries on the table as he asks, "What is it?"

"A secret project to create super-powered people. The ones being dumped are the failures – the ones who didn't survive the process they're attempting to carry out successfully." She blinks back tears and his arm wraps around her shoulders.

"Show me," he says softly, and grabs a chair to sit beside her.

"We should eat first," she tells him. "It's not going to be a quick account."

He looks at her carefully, and she must look as weary as she feels because he nods. "Okay. Come and give me a hand," he suggests. "You look like you could use a break from whatever you've found."

"Yeah, I – that's a good idea, Phil."

He picks up the grocery sack, and they move into the kitchen. 

"I'm sorry, Phil," she tells him as she helps him prepare lunch.

"For what?" he looks puzzled by her apology. 

"For ruining whatever you had planned for your lunchbreak."

He blushes a bit, then shakes his head. "It doesn't matter. This is more important." 

As they eat, she explains to him how she came to her conclusions, admitting that she'd accessed the NYPD network from his laptop, which he shrugs off, then the various stages of her investigation.

By the time she's finished her account, they've finished eating, so they adjourn to the sitting room and Coulson brings the laptop over to the coffee table so they can sit side by side on the couch as she shows him exactly what she's dug up, using the methods she's already described.

It takes more than an hour for Daisy to talk him through everything, and when she's done, his expression is hard, and she can feel the anger that colours his vibrations.

"I need to take this to the Captain," he tells her. "Actually, no, you need to show this to Captain Weaver."

"Me?" Daisy asks, startled.

He nods. "You. Daisy, you've spent hours on this, but you've found more in half a day than any NYPD officer has found in the six months since the first victim was dumped."

"But I'm a civilian," she protests.

He snorts. "Who also happened to save the lives of two police officers last night," he says. "Don't worry, she'll listen. And then we can come up with a plan to take these bastards down."

By bedtime that night Daisy's convinced the reason she's still on this parallel Earth is because she's meant to help Coulson and his colleagues stop their version of Centipede.

Captain Weaver had listened intently to Daisy's account of what she'd uncovered, asked several pertinent questions, then called in some of Coulson and Trip's colleagues – all of whom were alternate versions of people she knew back on her Earth. Weaver had briefed them on Centipede with Daisy's help, then they'd hashed out a plan to take down the organisation.

Daisy's going to work with Mike Peterson and Akela Amador tomorrow: the pair are the most highly skilled computer experts that the 7th Precinct has. Also on the team are Mack, Elena, Bobbi, and May, and it feels good to Daisy to be working with them since she knows their counterparts so well.

She and Coulson have a late supper, during which he asks her about her universe's equivalent of the people she'd met today; talking about them makes her feel a bit homesick, but she tells him what he wants to know.

Afterwards they go to bed and he makes love to her slowly and tenderly before they spoon up together, Daisy's back pressed against Coulson's chest. When she wakes the next morning it's to discover that she's had a solid eight hours of uninterrupted sleep.

By the middle of the afternoon of Daisy's second day in this parallel everyone's gathered in the conference room again, and Daisy, with the Captain's permission and approval, is outlining a sting operation that she's designed to capture the people behind Centipede. She, Mike, and Akela had spent hours combing through the accumulated data on the victims, and established that everyone who'd been taken and dumped had been selected from the clientele of two different free health clinics for those on low incomes. Daisy, together with Mack, Elena, Trip, and May are going to present themselves as patients at one or other of the clinics, and hope that someone gets selected by the Centipede recruiters. She's convinced, and Captain Weaver had agreed, that the group must have operatives in both clinics in order to select their prospective victims. They're hoping that the Centipede recruiters will be prompt in making contact with the undercover officers so that the NYPD can act swiftly and hopefully prevent any further deaths.

As they're finished dinner that evening Coulson admits what Daisy's known ever since the Captain announced Daisy would be part of the undercover team: "I wish you weren't going in."

"I know you do," she says quietly. "But I have to – it's my op."

"And your data," he says, with a proud smile. "If it hadn't been for you, we'd still be completely in the dark about all of this. You're a very remarkable young woman, Daisy."

She feels heat in her face. Even though her Phil has never been stingy with praise, she still finds it difficult to accept it from anyone with equanimity.

"I wish you could stay here. You'd make a great cop."

She pulls a face at that, which makes him laugh, as she'd intended. "Yeah, I think I'll stick with being a SHIELD agent, if it's all the same to you."

The next day she's sure they've hit the jackpot when a young Asian woman named Raina approaches both Trip and Elena at the second clinic. The two officers go in at different times during the day, and Raina tags them both to tell them about a 'revolutionary new treatment' that's been created and is currently being trialled even now. They both agree to take part in an initial assessment to see if they're suitable to join the trial, and accept the business cards that Raina's handing out. This tells them who to call and when in order to arrange a meeting with the biochemist in charge of the trial.

At the other clinic Mack and May are both tagged too – by a Mr Giyera, whose face is all too familiar to Daisy. She herself isn't tagged, but after she leaves the clinic, when she's about a block away, she's jumped by Giyera and another man, and bundled into a waiting car, which immediately speeds off.

She's not too worried about being jumped as she's wearing a wire, which means Coulson and Captain Weaver are both aware of it the moment she's snatched. She's also wearing a tiny tracking device, just like the other four, the actual police officers on this op, were – and she'd bet a million dollars, if she had it, that Coulson's already following Giyera's car in his own.

Within the hour, the Centipede people have been arrested and taken away, and Daisy's writing up her report for Captain Weaver, and Coulson's organising a celebratory dinner for the team. Daisy wonders if she'll get the chance to be there when Captain Weaver calls her and Coulson into her office, and gestures for Daisy to close the door."

"We've found out why you were jumped rather than being tagged like the others," Weaver tells her, and Daisy can tell from the other woman's vibrations that she's unhappy about it.

"Let me guess," Daisy says. "They were already holding a young woman who looks a lot like me."

Coulson gasps quietly at Daisy's words, and Weaver's confirmation of them.

"Giyera assumed you were this young woman's – Skye is her name – sister."

Daisy nods, unsurprised. She'd been half expecting this, especially after what happened with her alternate self on the previous parallel Earth.

She's even less surprised when she feels the by-now-familiar compulsion to return the building which houses the portal.

Twenty minutes later, Coulson drops her off at the building, and after a few tears have been shed on both sides, Daisy heads inside, knowing that Coulson's going to the hospital where the Centipede victims are being cared for so that he can meet her counterpart. She has no idea if the two of them will end up together, but she hopes so.

She hopes, also, that she can finally go home, and as the familiar blue light engulfs her, she thinks firmly of her Phil Coulson.


	5. Fifth Parallel

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Daisy finally makes it back home to Phil - but there's one more stop along the way...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You might want tissues for this chapter.

**[Fifth Parallel]**

When the blue light fades Daisy's surprised to find she's not in an empty or abandoned building as she's been before – she can feel the vibrations of people outside the room she's in which, when she looks around, appears to be a storage room. There are racks of shelves filled with piles of clean towels, sheets, and pillow cases, plus actual pillows and comforters in clear, zip-locked bags, and while it could be a hotel, Daisy thinks that she's in a hospital – which is frankly worrying.

As she crosses the room she sees some white doctors' coats hanging up by the door, and she's tempted to slip one on to give herself some camouflage, but the downside to that is if someone mistakes her for a doctor and needs actual medical help that she can't give. 

Slipping out of the storeroom, she finds it's quieter in the hall that she'd anticipated, but she spots a large digital clock on a nearby wall and discovers it's just after 8.30pm. She doesn't hesitate for long in the hallway – she can feel that inner compulsion again, but this time it's directing her to go upstairs one floor, to a room at the back of the building. When she gets there she sees Phil Coulson lying on a bed; he's wired up to a couple of machines, and the sight is shocking. She gets a flashback to him lying in Raina's memory machine – helpless and vulnerable. He's no longer the physically fit, well-muscled man she knows and loves, and her first thought is cancer, because not only has he clearly lost weight, but he looks grey with fatigue, and he's completely bald now.

She glances up and down the hallway, but it's deserted, and she can't even sense anyone else's vibrations on this floor, so she gently pushes open the door, slips into the room, and after closing the door again, she crosses to the bed.

He opens his eyes just as she reaches the bed, and his reaction is completely unanticipated. "Get out, and tell Fitz I am _not_ interested in a damned AI." His voice is hoarse, but stronger than she'd expected.

"I'm not an AI, Phil," she says gently, and he frowns up at her.

"Well you're not a ghost – Daisy would never be so cruel as to haunt me. So what are you?"

"Human. Well, Inhuman actually – but flesh and blood." She reaches over the rail of the bed and lightly touches her fingertips to his wrist.

"Daisy?" His voice takes on a querulous note, then to her horror, he begins weeping silently.

She tries to calm him, but it's not until she ditches her field jacket, gauntlets, and boots to climb onto the bed beside him that his sobs fade, and then he's clinging to her as best he can with arms that feel like bundles of twigs.

"You're real," he says in a choked voice. "How is this possible."

She carefully slides her left arm under him and eases him closer, appalled at how little of him there is: he's always been such a solid, compact man, but now he's so skinny and weak she feels as if one strong gust of wind would blow him away.

"I'm from a parallel Earth," she tells him. "I've been travelling from one parallel to another over the last several days. On the Earth I just left behind, you and Trip were cops.

"Daisy," he says, a wealth of emotion in his voice. And she presses light kisses to his brow and cheeks as she does her best to soothe him.

After a while he falls asleep in her arms, and she guesses the emotional upheaval has worn him out. She wishes there was a way to find out what happened to him without waking him up again. Then the door opens and Lady Sif walks in. She's not wearing Asgardian armour, but she somehow still looks every inch the warrior.

"Daisy." Her voice is low and sorrowful, and her expression grave as she greets her.

"Lady Sif. I wasn't expecting to see you."

"I expected you," she says, but doesn't immediately elaborate on what this means. "I was there the day you were found after Daniel Whitehall had finished with you."

Daisy swallows, remembering that name from Cal's account of what happened to Jiaying. "Whitehall?"

Sif nods and comes to stand beside the bed, her hands grasping the rail tightly. "He was responsible for the death of your - her parents: Cal he murdered last year, after he brought you – her – to Whitehall. Your – sorry – her mother, Jiaying he eviscerated when you were just a baby."

Daisy realises that she's talking about the Daisy of this universe and suppresses a shudder of horror, not wanting to disturb Coulson.

"I guess he was trying to find out how it was she could have lived so long and barely aged," Daisy says in a flat tone.

"Yes. He concocted a serum which returned his youth, but he was still ageing again after taking it. He thought that if he could use her as he'd used Jiaying, he'd be restored once more, and possibly he wouldn't age again." She glances away, then looks back at Daisy again. "Whitehall was wrong. I don't know whether it was the fact that our Daisy was only half-Inhuman and half-human, or the fact that she was an 084 that made her blood and DA different, but instead of growing younger again, Whitehall aged very rapidly until he was nothing more than a pile of ash and bones on the lab floor."

"Good," says Daisy in a savage undertone. "He deserved it. But what does that have to do with Coulson?" 

"After your – her death, his health started to deteriorate. At first Dr Simmons thought it must be cancer, but she ran test after test, and couldn't find a single cell that was affected." Sif rubs a hand over her face, and Daisy realises for the first time how weary the Asgardian looks.

"Eventually, Dr Simmons called in Dr Foster, and she in turn contacted us. I was able to take Director Coulson to Asgard, briefly, and my people came to the conclusion that the Kree blood in you had been acting as some sort of stabilising influence on the Kree blood in him, but with you dead it had begun to 'take over'." She makes air quotes around the last two words. "Essentially, without you around, what brought him back to life is now killing him again."

Daisy gives the other woman a horrified look. "Can it be reversed?"

"We think it's too far advanced, now," Sif says carefully.

"How far?" Daisy can feel a lump in her throat that it's hard to speak around.

"He has only a few days left, I'm afraid."

"And that's why you're here," guesses Daisy.

Sif nods. "Thor is needed urgently at home, so he sent me in his stead as a representative of Asgard."

"You said before that you had been expecting me," Daisy observes.

Lady Sif nods. "I had a vision of you surrounded by blue light. You looked older somehow, and your hair was shorter and darker in colour than the Daisy who died. I knew it was you, but not you. That is, not her." She frowns.

"I'm from a parallel Earth," she tells the Asgardian, and briefly describes the events of the past few days.

"There are tides in the universe we cannot swim against," Sif says, a little cryptically, Daisy feels. "It is clearly Fated that you and Phil Coulson be together, and this experience has shown you the importance of your relationship – that you saved his life four times, and were then instrumental in bringing a version of him and a version of you together on more than one occasion – tells me you two are Destined to be together."

"I don't believe in Fate or Destiny," she tells the Asgardian, who chuckles.

"Maybe not, but that doesn't mean Fate cannot play a part in your life. The fact that you have been guided here at this time is no mere coincidence, I feel." She looks at Coulson sleeping in Daisy's arms, then adds, "This is the most restful sleep I have seen him have since he was admitted to this facility."

Daisy sighs softly, then looks at the man she cradles. "Yeah, okay."

"What do you want me to tell the others?"

"The others?"

"Agents May, Triplett, Morse, and Simmons are all in the waiting area downstairs, also sleeping."

"Let's wait until Coulson's awake again before letting them know I'm here," Daisy suggests. "I'd rather not disturb him if he's been sleeping as badly as you said."

"Very well. I will return to the others and wait."

Daisy nods agreement, then settles back on the bed. She can't help noticing that sharing a bed with Phil is getting to be a habit, and she wishes she'd dared to do so when her Phil had been hospitalised after losing his hand – she can't help thinking it would have done them both good to have shared comfort in that way, between her grieving for the loss of the mother she barely knew, and him mourning the loss of his hand.

Instead, although she'd visited him daily, she'd mostly stayed away, worrying that the sight of her would be a painful reminder of what he'd lost since it had been her mother's plan that had resulted in him losing his hand.

If she knew a way to go back in time, instead of moving between parallel Earths, she'd go back and relive those weeks differently. But there is no way to go back, she can only keep going forward, and she hopes that she can return to her Phil soon.

Daisy eventually falls asleep, and doesn’t wake until a nurse comes in with Coulson's daily dose of medication. She seems surprisingly unscandalised by the sight of Daisy sharing Coulson's bed, but the nurse, Claire, explains that Lady Sif had told her that Daisy was there.

"It's rather unorthodox, and not something we'd usually encourage or permit," Claire tells her, "but I'll make an exception in this case because this is the most sleep Mr Coulson has had in the last ten days."

As she speaks Coulson wakes up and his first words almost break her heart: "I thought you were a dream."

"Definitely real," she tells him, and gives him a very gentle squeeze before climbing from the bed.

"Don't go," he says, sounding panicked.

"Only as far as the bathroom, I promise," she says, and leans down to press her lips to his brow.

"Take your medicine now, Mr Coulson," Claire says as Daisy walks to the door in the corner of the room and enters to make use of the facilities.

When she returns Coulson's sitting up; the head of the bed's been raised, and there's a chair beside the bed, which she assumes is a subtle way of telling her not to get on the bed with him again. The nurse has gone, but Coulson tells her that Claire's going to be back soon to give him a sponge bath.

"You said last night that you're from a parallel Earth," he says, and she notices that he sounds brighter this morning, and he looks a bit more animated too.

"I am."

"And is there a Phil Coulson there?"

"Yes there is. He was the Director of SHIELD for a time, but he's back to being an Agent again, and he prefers that. He's my field partner."

"Are you and he together?" She notices he sounds a little diffident as he asks the question.

"No, not yet."

"So you want to be?"

"Yeah." She gives him an intent look. "Were you and Daisy together?"

He nods. "We had 2 years, 3 months, and 1 week together before Cal, her father, took her to Daniel Whitehall, and he – he – " He pauses, swallows convulsively, then shakes his head, tears spilling down his cheeks.

She doesn't hesitate to climb back onto the bed and hold him as he weeps, his breath hitching. "Shh, shh," she says, "It's okay, Phil, you don't have to say it."

"How could he?" Coulson demands brokenly. "How could he take her away from me? How could he take her to pieces? She never would've hurt him."

Daisy does her best to calm him, rubbing a hand up and down his back, and holding him close until his sobs finally subside.

She senses someone coming and looks up, assuming it's Claire, the nurse, but it's May instead. She gapes at Daisy, then reaches for an ICER that's in a shoulder holster under her leather jacket.

"Don't," Daisy says firmly. "Don't shoot me in here, not in front of him." Fortunately Claire comes in at that moment, and May backs down. "Talk to Lady Sif," Daisy tells the older agent, then turns her attention to Claire as May moves out into the hall.

"I know, I know," Daisy mutters to the nurse, "but he was crying, and if you think – "

"Daisy, it's okay," Claire says, cutting her off. "I understand." She shakes her head slightly. "I'll come back later. And thanks for stopping Agent May."

"It wouldn't have helped," Daisy says, and Claire gives her a quizzical look, but doesn't ask any questions. She simply nods, then goes back out again.

When Daisy turns her attention back to Coulson she finds him giving her a rather watery smile. "What?" she asks, confused.

"The way you stood up to Melinda," he says, and chuckles briefly.

"Well shooting me would have been a very bad idea, assuming I didn't Quake her ICER to bits first."

"You can do that?" he asks, sounding as awed as her Phil.

"And lots more besides," she tells him.

"You're amazing," he tells her, and she feels a blush heating her cheeks.

An orderly comes in shortly afterwards with breakfast for Coulson, which reminds her that she hasn't eaten for some time. Before she can ask him if there's a visitor's canteen somewhere, the door opens again and Lady Sif looks in.

"Would you like some breakfast, Daisy?"

"Coffee," she says immediately, "and breakfast, yeah."

"I'll get you something."

"Thanks."

When she returns, Daisy's sitting on the side of the bed, feeding Coulson his breakfast.

"It really is you," says a voice behind her, and she looks up to see Bobbi and Jemma peering in through the door, past Sif.

"It's me, but not me," she tells Jemma, and Lady Sif adds, "I have explained the situation to everyone, and Agent May has undertaken not to try to shoot you."

"Good to hear," Daisy tells her, accepting the cup of coffee and the paper bag of doughnuts that Sif has brought for her.

"We'll talk later," Daisy tells Jemma and Bobbi, who both nod, then disappear down the hall. Lady Sif asks if there's anything else she can fetch for either of them, then leaves them alone.

Daisy remains on this parallel for three days, spending most of her time in Coulson's room, and a good percentage of that is spent sitting by or lying on Coulson's bed, holding him and talking to him. She does leave him with May, Tripp, and Sif, for a short time every day so she can go back to Jemma and Bobbi's apartment to shower and change into clean, borrowed clothing.

On the third day, about 7pm, Coulson starts to deteriorate very rapidly, and he knows as well as she does that this is it.

"I've had three very good days," he tells her hoarsely as Claire makes him as comfortable as she can. "Your presence here and now, Daisy, has been a precious gift which I didn't expect. Thank you for coming."

She holds his hands in hers, only vaguely aware of May, Tripp, Bobbi, Jemma, and Sif filing in to make their final farewells. To Daisy's relief he slips into sleep one final time, and although she weeps, she's grateful to have had the chance to make his last few days a bit better.

Bobbi takes Daisy back to her apartment where she showers, eats, then sleeps until 6am the next day. She's grateful that she feels no compulsion to leave this parallel yet, and hopes that she can remain until Coulson's funeral.

Four days later she makes her farewells to the others, then steps into the storage closet and blue light sweeps over her. She's fighting back tears as the light dissipates and doesn't immediately notice her surroundings, and it's only when Coulson, her Phil, embraces her with a heartfelt "Skye. Dammit. Daisy" that she realises she's finally back home.

She's not surprised to learn that Phil insisted on staying in the building from which she'd vanished – in part so he could await her return (Mack tells her that Phil had never once doubted that Daisy would come back), but also to ensure that no one could interfere with the possibly-Kree device while she was gone.

She showers and changes into clean jeans and tank, then over the pizza that they'd picked up on the way back to the Playground, she gives them a summary of her experiences. She leaves out the sex, of course, but recounts the rest.

"Why do you think this happened?" Mack asks when Daisy finishes speaking.

She shrugs. "Why was the device even there in the first place?" she counters. "What were HYDRA doing with it? Were they even able to get it to work?"

"It didn't work for them," he tells her. "We found their records of it – it was acquired by a HYDRA agent in the Gobi desert but no one could ever get it to do anything."

"Perhaps you need to be an Inhuman for it to work," Daisy suggests. She looks at May. "I trust it's locked up somewhere safe?"

"It is," May says laconically.

"Good." She stifles a yawn, and May orders her to get some sleep, telling her she can worry about writing up her report tomorrow.

"Thanks boss," she groans, then leaves the others to finish eating. She hasn't gone very far down the hallway before Phil catches up with her, and she immediately slides her hand into his.

"We need to talk," she tells him. "There's some stuff that happened while I was gone that I didn't tell the others, but I want to tell you."

"Should I be worried?" he asks, looking down at their linked hands, and she lets go quickly, embarrassed.

"No, but it's gonna sound messed up," she tells him.

He nods and leads the way to his quarters. After the Robot Director, as Daisy persists in calling Coulson's successor, left and May had agreed to become the new Director 'until Daisy's ready', Phil had offered to swap quarters with May, but she'd refused saying the bunk she had was adequate to her needs. Daisy's been to Phil's quarters many times – he always invites her to unwind there after their field missions, a process she enjoys as they usually drink a couple of beers and listen to his records, and just talk.

"Do you want a beer?" he asks, going to the fridge in the corner.

"Yeah, I will. Thanks."

He takes out two and they settle side by side on his couch. "What do you want to tell me?" he asks, nudging her elbow with his.

She sighs, swallows a mouthful of beer, then begins filling in the holes in her narrative.

He listens intently, and she's relieved that he's not wearing his 'judgey face', but at the same time, she's worried that he'll despise her for what she did.

She finishes her account, then drinks the rest of her beer in the silence that follows. Just when she's starting to feel nervous about the fact he's not saying anything, he wraps an arm around her shoulders, and when she looks up, he leans in and kisses her – not a little peck on the cheek, but a full-blown kiss with tongue, and biting, and then he hauls her onto his lap and shoves her tank up and off so he can get his hands on her breasts.

"Was I good?" he demands, and she can feel arousal pulsing along his vibrations.

"The best," she tells him. "Every fuck with you was the best I'd ever had."

"Good." He gets her jeans unfastened and insinuates his hand inside, his fingers sliding over her skin. "Wanna see if I can live up to my reputation?"

She can't help chuckling at his question. "I'm sure you will," she tells him, opening his pants so she can get her hands on him.

Neither one of them bothers to finish getting their pants off before Phil is thrusting into her slick heat, and she has to muffle a cry of pleasure as she comes with his first thrust.

Eventually they adjourn to his bed and they kiss and cuddle, and talk until Coulson is hard again. Their second time is slower and more tender, and Daisy finds herself weeping, although she's not entirely sure why – maybe it's just the release of so much tension and her pent-up feelings.

There's no question of her not staying the night in his quarters after that, and she wonders if everyone else will treat this development as inevitable, or if there will be scandalised looks in the morning at breakfast.

She decides she doesn't care, and she spoons up with Phil, letting him be her big spoon. The last few days have been physically and emotionally demanding, but she's happy to pay the price if it means falling asleep in the arms of the man she loves most in the world.


End file.
